Assessing. Liberty and Security for the Post-September 11 United States

Transcription

1 Assessing thenew Normal Liberty and Security for the Post-September 11 United States

2 ABOUT US Since 1978, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights has worked in the U.S. and abroad to create a secure and humane world by advancing justice, human dignity and respect for the rule of law. We support human rights activists who fight for basic freedoms and peaceful change at the local level; protect refugees in flight from persecution and repression; promote fair economic practices by creating safeguards for workers rights; and help build a strong international system of justice and accountability for the worst human rights crimes. William D. Zabel, Chair of the Board Tom Bernstein, President of the Board Michael Posner, Executive Director Elisa Massimino, Director of the Washington, D.C. Office Michael McClintock, Director of Program Jill Savitt, Director of Communications ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report was edited by: Fiona Doherty and Deborah Pearlstein This report was written by: Eleanor Acer, Eric Biel, Déirdre Clancy, Erin Corcoran, Fiona Doherty, Kenneth Hurwitz, David Lisson, Elora Mukherjee, Deborah Pearlstein, Cory Smith, Rebecca Thornton, and Tahlia Townsend. Others who contributed to the report were: Farrin Anello, Raymond Audain, Elizabeth Fiechter, Sarah Graham, Martina Pomeroy, Archana Pyati, and Heidee Stoller. We wish to thank the contributors whose funding made this report possible: The Atlantic Philanthropies, the John Merck Fund, the Open Society Institute, and Matthew Dontzin, along with fellowship provider Equal Justice Works. Available online at by or tel: (212) Price: US$15.00 Website: by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. All Rights Reserved PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ISBN:

5 INTRODUCTION Therefore pass these Sirens by, and stop your men s ears with wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand upright on a cross piece half way up the mast, and they must lash the rope s ends to the mast itself, that you may have the pleasure of listening. If you beg and pray the men to unloose you, then they must bind you faster. Homer, The Odyssey Legal scholars have often invoked the story of Ulysses and the Sirens to explain the Constitution s role in American life. Just as Ulysses had himself tied to the mast to save himself from the Sirens song, so have we tied ourselves to the Constitution to keep short-term impulses from compromising a long-term commitment to a free society. The metaphor that describes the Constitution is equally apt for the rule of law more broadly. In a society bound by the rule of law, individuals are governed by publicly known regulations, applied equally in all cases, and enforced by fair and independent courts. The rule of law is a free society s method of ensuring that whatever crisis it faces, government remains bound by the constraints that keep society free. This report, the third in a series, documents the continuing erosion of basic human rights protections under U.S. law and policy since September 11, The reports address changes in five major areas: government openness; personal privacy; immigration; security-related detention; and the effect of U.S. actions on human rights standards around the world. Changes in these arenas began occurring rapidly in the weeks following September 11, and have been largely sustained or expanded in the two years since. As Vice President Dick Cheney explained shortly after September 11: Many of the steps we have now been forced to take will become permanent in American life, part of a new normalcy that reflects an understanding of the world as it is. Indeed, today, two years after the terrorist attacks, it is no longer possible to view these changes as aberrant parts of a short-term emergency response. They have become part of a new normal in American life. Some of the changes now part of this new normal are sensible and good. Al Qaeda continues to pose a profound threat to the American public, and the government has the right and duty to protect its people from attacks. A new national security strategy aimed at reducing this threat is essential. We thus welcome efforts to improve coordination among federal, state, and local agencies, and between law enforcement and intelligence officials. Equally welcome would be greater efforts to protect the nation s critical infrastructure supporting energy, transportation, food, and water; and efforts to strengthen the preparedness of our domestic front-line forces police, fire, and emergency medical teams, as well as all those in public health. Many of these changes are past due. i

6 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL But the new normal is also defined by dramatic changes in the relationship between the U.S. government and the people it serves changes that have meant the loss of particular freedoms for some, and worse, a detachment from the rule of law as a whole. As this report details, the United States has become unbound from the principles that have long held it to the mast. ABANDONING THE COURTS Perhaps most marked of these changes, the new normal has brought a sharp departure from the rule-of-law principles guaranteeing that like cases will be treated alike, and that all will have recourse to fair and independent courts as a check on executive power. In the two years since September 11, the executive has established a set of extra-legal institutions that bypass the federal judiciary; most well known are the military commissions and the detention camp at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Individuals subject to military commission proceedings will have their fate decided by military personnel who report only to the president; there will be no appeal to any independent civilian court. And the administration maintains that those detained by the United States outside the U.S. borders at Guantánamo and elsewhere are beyond the jurisdictional reach of U.S. courts altogether. At these facilities, there is no pretense that like cases need be treated alike. Thus, the Defense Department announced without explanation that six current detainees at the Guantánamo camp had become eligible for trial by military commission. Among the six were U.K. citizens Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abassi, and Australian citizen David Hicks (the identities of the other three are unknown). In the face of staunch protests from the United Kingdom and Australia, both close U.S. allies, the United States promised that the Australian and U.K. detainees unlike the nationals of the other 40-some nations represented in Guantánamo would not be subject to the death penalty, and would not be monitored in their conversations with counsel. Despite vigorous international opposition to the camp and military commission justice, the United States has thus far refused to afford similar protections to any other nation s detainees. The United States obligation to adhere to the international laws to which it remains bound including the Geneva Convention protections for prisoners of war appears forgotten altogether. In those cases that have come before the U.S. courts, the executive now consistently demands something less than independent judicial review. The Justice Department has continued to advance the argument that any U.S. citizen may be detained indefinitely without charges or access to counsel if the executive branch presents some evidence that he is an enemy combatant, a category it has yet properly to define. The Justice Department has argued that U.S. citizen José Padilla should not be allowed an opportunity to rebut the evidence that the government presents an argument that the district court in the case refused to accept. Yet despite the federal court s order that the Justice Department allow Padilla access to his counsel and in the face of briefs filed on Padilla s behalf by a coalition including both the Lawyers Committee and the Cato Institute the Justice Department has refused to comply with the court s order. Neither Padilla s counsel nor any member of his family has seen or heard from him in 15 months. ii

7 INTRODUCTION And notwithstanding the fundamental rule-of-law principle that laws of general application will be equally applied to all, the executive has, without explanation, detained some terrorist suspects in military brigs as enemy combatants, while subjecting others to criminal prosecution in U.S. courts. Detainees in the former category are deprived of all due process rights; detainees in the latter category are entitled to the panoply of fairness protections the Constitution provides, including access to counsel and the right to have guilt established (or not) in court. As the Justice Department put it: There s no bright line dividing the enemy detainees from the everyday criminal defendant. Indeed, the executive accused both John Walker Lindh and Yaser Hamdi of participating in hostilities against the United States in Afghanistan. Both are U.S. citizens, captured in Afghanistan in 2001, and handed over to U.S. forces shortly thereafter. Yet the executive brought charges against Lindh through the normal criminal justice system, affording Lindh all due process protections available under the Constitution. Hamdi, in contrast, has remained in incommunicado detention for 16 months. He has never seen a lawyer. In any case, the executive designation that one is an enemy combatant and another a criminal suspect appears subject to change at any time. Some who have been subject to criminal prosecution for alleged terrorism-related activities now face the prospect that, should they begin to win their case, the government may take away the privilege of criminal procedure and subject them to the indeterminate enemy combatant status a prospect now well known to all suspects not already in incommunicado detention. Criminal defendant Ali Saleh Kahlah al-marri was designated an enemy combatant just weeks before his long-scheduled criminal trial. And the administration has suggested that if it loses certain procedural rulings in the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, he too may lose the constitutional protections to which he is entitled. PRIVACY AND ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT INFORMATION As the breadth of these examples should suggest, the changes that have become part of the new normal are not limited to the role of the courts. The two years since September 11 have seen a shift away from the core U.S. presumption of access that is essential to democratic government the presumption that government is largely open to public scrutiny, while the personal information of its people is largely protected from government intrusion. Today, the default in America has become just the opposite the work of the executive branch increasingly is conducted in secret, but unfettered government access to personal information is becoming the norm. For example, the administration continues vigorously to defend provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that allow the FBI secretly to access Americans personal information (including library, medical, education, internet, telephone, and financial records) without having to show that the target has any involvement in espionage or terrorism. With little or no judicial oversight, commercial service providers may be compelled to produce these records solely on the basis of a declaration from the FBI that the information is for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. And the PATRIOT Act makes it a crime to reveal that the FBI has searched such information. Thus, a librarian who speaks out about having to reveal a patron s book selections can be subject to prosecution. Because of the secrecy of these surveillance operations, little is known about how many people have been iii

8 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL subject to such intrusions. But many have been outspoken about the potential these measures have to chill freedom of expression and inquiry. As one librarian put it, such measures conflict[] with our code of ethics because they force librarians to let the FBI sweep up vast amounts of information about lots of people without any indication that they ve done anything wrong. At the same time, according to the National Archives and Records Administration, the number of classification actions by the executive branch rose 14 percent in 2002 over 2001 and declassification activity fell to its lowest level in seven years. The Freedom of Information Act for nearly four decades an essential public tool for learning about the inner workings of government has been gravely damaged by an unprecedented use of exemptions and new statutory allowances for certain security-related information, expansively defined. And a new executive order, issued this past spring, further eases the burden on government officials responsible for deciding what information to classify. As a result, being an informed, responsible citizen in U.S. society is measurably more difficult than it was before the September 11 attacks. IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES Citizens are far from alone in feeling the effects of these rapid changes in U.S. policy. The new normal is also marked by an important shift in the U.S. position toward immigrants and refugees. Far from viewing immigrants as a pillar of strength, U.S. policy now reflects an assumption that immigrants are a primary national threat. Beginning immediately after September 11, the Justice Department s enforcement of immigration laws has ranged from indiscriminate and haphazard (as the Department s independent Inspector General put it with respect to those rounded up in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks) to rigorously selective, targeting Arab, Muslim, and South Asian minorities to the exclusion of other groups. Through the expenditure of enormous resources, the civil immigration system has become a principal instrument to secure the detention of suspicious individuals when a government trawling for information can find no conduct that would justify their detention on any criminal charge. And through a series of nationality-specific information and detention sweeps from special registration requirements to voluntary interviews to the detention of all those seeking asylum from a list of predominantly Muslim countries the administration has acted on an assumption that all such individuals are of concern. Despite the sustained focus on immigrants, there is growing evidence that the new normal in immigration has done little to improve Americans safety. By November 2001, FBI-led task force agents had arrested and detained almost 1,200 people in connection with the investigation of the September 11 attacks. Of those arrested during this period, 762 were detained solely on the basis of civil immigration violations. But as the Inspector General s report now makes clear, many of those detainees did not receive core due process protections, and the decision to detain them was at times extremely attenuated from the focus of the September 11 investigation. Worse, the targeted registration and interview programs have seriously undermined relations between the Arab community and law enforcement personnel relationships essential to developing the kinds of intelligence law enforcement has made clear it most needs. An April 2003 GAO report on one voluntary interview program is particularly telling. While finding that iv

9 INTRODUCTION most of the interviews were conducted in a respectful and professional manner, the report explained that many of the interviewees did not feel the interviews were truly voluntary and feared that they would face repercussions for declining to participate. As for the security gains realized, information resulting from the interview project had not been analyzed as of March 2003, and there were no specific plans to do so. Moreover, None of [the] law enforcement officials with whom [the GAO] spoke could provide examples of investigative leads that resulted from the project. THE UNITED STATES IN THE WORLD Finally, the United States detachment from its own rule-of-law principles is having a profound effect on human rights around the world. Counterterrorism has become the new rubric under which opportunistic governments seek to justify their actions, however offensive to human rights. Indeed, governments long criticized for human rights abuses have publicly applauded U.S. policies, which they now see as an endorsement of their own longstanding practices. Shortly after September 11, for example, Egypt s President Hosni Mubarak declared that new U.S. policies proved that we were right from the beginning in using all means, including military tribunals, to combat terrorism.... There is no doubt that the events of September 11 created a new concept of democracy that differs from the concept that Western states defended before these events, especially in regard to the freedom of the individual. In addition to spurring a global proliferation of aggressive counterterrorism measures, the United States has at times actively undermined judicial authority in nations whose court systems are just beginning to mature. In one such instance, Bosnian authorities transferred six Algerian men into U.S. custody at the request of U.S. officials, in violation of that nation s domestic law. The Bosnian police had arrested the men, five of whom also had Bosnian citizenship, in October 2001 on suspicion that they had links with Al Qaeda. In January 2002, the Bosnian Supreme Court ordered them released for lack of evidence. But instead of releasing them, Bosnian authorities handed them over to U.S. troops serving with NATO-led peacekeepers. Despite an injunction from the Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina, expressly ordering that four of the men remain in the country for further proceedings, the men were shortly thereafter transported to the detention camp at Guantánamo. They remain there today. As the report that follows demonstrates in greater detail, the U.S. government can no longer promise that individuals under its authority will be subject to a system bound by the rule of law. In a growing number of cases, legal safeguards are now observed only so far as they are consistent with the chosen ends of power. Yet too many of the policies that have led to this new normal not only fail to enhance U.S. security as each of the following chapters discusses but also exact an unnecessarily high price in liberty. For a government unbound by the rule of law presides over a society that is something less than free. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights September 2003 v

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11 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATIONS ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL, the third in a series of reports, documents the continuing erosion of basic human rights protections under U.S. law and policy since September 11. Today, two years after the attacks, it is no longer possible to view these changes as aberrant parts of an emergency response. Rather, the expansion of executive power and abandonment of established civil and criminal procedures have become part of a new normal in American life. The new normal, defined in part by the loss of particular freedoms for some, is as troubling for its detachment from the rule of law as a whole. The U.S. government can no longer promise that individuals will be governed by known principles of conduct, applied equally in all cases, and administered by independent courts. As this report shows, in a growing number of cases, legal safeguards are now observed only insofar as they are consistent with the chosen ends of power. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS CHAPTER ONE: OPEN GOVERNMENT! The administration continues efforts to roll back the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), both by expanding the reach of existing statutory exemptions, and by adding a new critical infrastructure exemption. The new exemption could limit public access to important health, safety, and environmental information submitted by businesses to the government. Even if the information reveals that a firm is violating health, safety, or environmental laws, it cannot be used against the firm that submitted it in any civil action unless it was submitted in bad faith. At the same time, the administration has removed once-public information from government websites, including EPA risk management plans that provide important information about the dangers of chemical accidents and emergency response mechanisms. This move came despite the FBI s express statement that the EPA information presented no unique terrorist threat.! The administration has won several recent court victories further restricting FOIA s reach. In American Civil Liberties Union v. U.S. Department of Justice, a federal district court denied the ACLU s request for information concerning how often the Justice Department had used its expanded authority under the PATRIOT Act. In Center for National Security Studies v. U.S. Department of Justice, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the executive s assertion of a FOIA exemption to withhold the names of those detained in investigations following September 11, as well as information about the place, time, and reason for their detention. Contrary to well-settled FOIA principles requiring the government to provide specific reasons for withholding information, the appeals court deferred to the executive s broad assertion that disclosure of the information would interfere with law enforcement. vii

12 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL! Executive Order (E.O ), issued by President Bush on March 28, 2003, also promotes greater government secrecy by allowing the executive to delay the release of government documents; giving the executive new powers to reclassify previously released information; broadening exceptions to declassification rules; and lowering the standard under which information may be withheld from release from requiring that it should be expected to result in harm to that it could be expected to have that result. In addition, E.O removes a provision from the previously operative rules mandating that [i]f there is significant doubt about the need to classify information, it shall not be classified. In essence, this deletion shifts the government s default setting from do not classify under the previous rules to classify under E.O ! The administration continues to clash with Congress over access to executive information. The Justice Department recently provided some limited responses to congressional questions about the implementation of the PATRIOT Act only after a senior Republican member of the House threatened to subpoena the requested documents. Indeed, the Justice Department now operates under a directive instructing Department employees to inform the Department s Office of Legislative Affairs of all potential briefings on Capitol Hill and significant, substantive conversations with staff and members on Capitol Hill so that the office may assist in determining the appropriateness of proceeding with potential briefings. Controversy also erupted over the administration s insistence on classifying key sections of a congressional report on the intelligence failures surrounding September 11. As of August 2003, 46 senators had signed a letter to the president requesting that he declassify additional portions of the report.! Members of Congress from across the political spectrum are beginning to heed security experts warnings that too much secrecy may well result in less security. For example, Porter Goss (R-FL), Chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, recently testified that there s a lot of gratuitous classification going on, and that the dysfunctional classification system remains his committee s greatest challenge. Others have emphasized that secrecy can breed increased distrust in governmental institutions. As Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has noted: Excessive administration secrecy on issues related to the September 11 attacks feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public s confidence in government. CHAPTER TWO: PERSONAL PRIVACY! The administration is vigorously defending sections 215 and 505 of the PATRIOT Act, which allow the FBI secretly to access personal information about U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents (including library, medical, education, internet, telephone, and financial records) without demonstrating that the target has any involvement in espionage or terrorism. With little or no judicial oversight, commercial service providers may be compelled to produce these records solely on the basis of a written declaration from the FBI that the information is sought for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. And the PATRIOT Act makes it a crime to reveal that the FBI has requested such information. Thus, a librarian viii

13 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATIONS who speaks out about being forced to reveal a patron s book selections can be subject to prosecution. Many have spoken out about the potential these measures have to chill freedom of expression and inquiry. As one librarian put it, section 215 conflicts with our code of ethics because it forces librarians to let the FBI sweep up vast amounts of information about lots of people without any indication that they ve done anything wrong. The president s proposed additions would broaden such powers even further, allowing the attorney general to issue administrative subpoenas (which do not require judicial approval) in the course of domestic as well as international terrorism investigations.! The administration also continues efforts to resuscitate some version of the Total Information Awareness project (TIA) an initiative announced in 2002 that would enable the government to search personal data, including religious and political contributions; driving records; high school transcripts; book purchases; medical records; passport applications; car rentals; and phone, , and internet logs in search of patterns that are related to predicted terrorist activities. The initial TIA proposal raised widespread privacy concerns, and experts have strongly questioned the efficacy of the project. The U.S. Association for Computing Machinery the nation s oldest computer technology association recently warned that even under optimistic estimates, likely false positives could result in as many as 3 million citizens being wrongly identified as potential terrorists each year. To its credit, Congress has taken these warnings seriously and has begun efforts to rein in TIA-related work. The Senate recently adopted a provision eliminating funding for TIA research and development, and requiring congressional authorization for the deployment of any such program. The House also adopted a provision requiring congressional approval for TIA activities affecting U.S. citizens, but it did not cut off funds. In the meantime, TIA remains part of ongoing executive efforts.! The Transportation Security Administration s (TSA) current system for preventing terrorist access to airplanes relies on watchlists compiled from a variety of government sources. TSA has refused to supply details of who is on the lists and why. But the rapid expansion of the lists has been matched by a growing number of errors: TSA receives an average of 30 calls per day from airlines regarding passengers erroneously flagged as potential terrorists. Even this may be an underestimate: TSA has no centralized system for monitoring errors, so it does not collect complete data on how many times this happens. The confusion stems from a range of sources from outdated name-matching algorithms to inaccuracies in the data from intelligence services. Passengers have found it almost impossible to have even obvious errors corrected.! TSA also continues to develop a new passenger risk assessment system the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System II (CAPPS II). As envisaged, CAPPS II would assign a security risk rating to every air traveler based on information from commercial data providers and government intelligence agencies. The new system would rely on the same intelligence data used for the existing watchlists, and would also be vulnerable to error introduced by reliance on commercial databases. CAPPS II would be exempt from existing legislation that requires agencies to provide individuals with the opportunity to ix

14 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL correct government records. And TSA has proposed that CAPPS II be exempted from a standard Privacy Act requirement that an agency maintain only such information about a person as is necessary to accomplish an authorized agency purpose.! The past two years have seen a significant increase in the use of foreign intelligence surveillance orders (a type of search warrant whose availability was expanded by the PATRIOT Act). These so-called FISA orders may be issued with far fewer procedural checks than ordinary criminal search warrants. Requests for FISA orders are evaluated ex parte by a secret court in the Justice Department, and officials need not show probable cause of criminal activity to secure the order. Between 2001 and 2002, FISA orders increased by 31 percent, while the number of ordinary federal criminal search warrants dipped by nine percent. The number of FISA orders issued in 2002 is 21 percent greater than the largest number in the previous decade, and FISA orders now account for just over half of all federal wiretapping. In addition, since September 11, the FBI has obtained 170 emergency FISA orders searches that may be carried out on the sole authority of the attorney general for 72 hours before being reviewed by any court. This is more than triple the number employed in the prior 23-year history of the FISA statute. CHAPTER THREE: IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES, AND MINORITIES! The Justice Department has moved aggressively to increase state and local participation in the enforcement of federal immigration law. The Justice Department has argued that state and local officials have inherent authority to arrest and detain persons who are in violation of immigration laws, and whose names appear in a national crime database. The legal basis for this inherent authority is unclear. These moves have encountered strong resistance from local officials concerned that they will drain already scarce law enforcement resources and undermine already fragile community relations. As the chief of police in Arlington, Texas explained: We can t and won t throw our scarce resources at quasi-political, vaguely criminal, constitutionally questionable, [or] any other evolving issues or unfunded mandates that aren t high priorities with our citizenry.! During primary hostilities in Iraq, from March to April 2003, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) operated a program of automatically detaining asylum seekers from a group of 33 nations and territories where Al Qaeda or other such groups were believed to operate. Under the program, arriving asylum seekers from the targeted countries were to be detained without parole for the duration of their asylum proceedings, even when they met the applicable parole criteria and presented no risk to the public. The program was terminated in April 2003 in the wake of a public outcry. The administration has not disclosed whether any of those detained under the program have yet been released from detention.! While the administration has taken some steps to remedy the draconian policies that led to mass detentions of non-citizens in the weeks following September 11, the harsh effects of these now-discontinued round-ups have become clear. By the beginning of November 2001, FBI-led task force agents had detained almost 1,200 people in connection with the investigation of the September 11 attacks. Of these, 762 were detained solely on the x

15 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATIONS basis of civil immigration violations, such as overstaying their visas. As a 198-page report issued by the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General now verifies, the decision to detain was at times extremely attenuated from the focus of the investigation. Many detainees did not receive notice of the charges against them for weeks some for more than a month after arrest and were deprived of other core due process protections. Particularly harsh conditions prevailed at a Brooklyn detention center and at Passaic County Jail in Paterson, New Jersey. Of greatest ongoing concern, the expanded custody authority that was used to effect these extended detentions is still on the books. As a result, there is as yet little to prevent such widespread round-ups and detentions from occurring again.! On April 17, 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a sweeping decision preventing an 18-year-old Haitian asylum seeker from being released from detention. In the decision (known as In re D-J-), the attorney general concluded that the asylum seeker, David Joseph, was not entitled to an individualized assessment of the need for his detention based on national security concerns. There was no claim that Joseph himself presented a threat. The expansive wording of the decision raises concerns that the administration may seek to deny broader categories of immigration detainees any individualized assessment of whether their detention is necessary whenever the executive contends that national security interests are implicated.! The effects of the temporary registration requirements imposed by the Justice Department s call-in registration program instituted last summer and concluded on April 25, 2003 are now evident. Call-in registration required visiting males age 16 to 45 from 25 predominantly Arab and Muslim countries to appear in Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) offices to be fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned under oath by INS officers. But misinformation about the program, including inaccurate, unclear, and conflicting notices distributed by the INS, led some men unintentionally to violate the program s requirements often resulting in their deportation. Attorneys reported that they were denied access to their clients during portions of the interviews, and some of the registrants inadvertently waived their right to a removal hearing. There were also troubling reports of mistreatment. In Los Angeles, for example, about 400 men and boys were detained during the first phase of the registration. Some were handcuffed and placed in shackles; others were hosed down with cold water; others were forced to sleep standing up because of overcrowding. In the end, 82,000 men complied with the call-in registration requirements.! The U.S. program to resettle refugees has long been a model for states all over the world, a reminder of the country s founding as a haven for the persecuted. But in the immediate aftermath of September 11, amid high security concerns, the program was shut down. Nearly two years later, the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program is still struggling. Significant delays in the conduct of security checks, insufficient resources, and management failures are among the problems that bedevil the program. From an average of 90,000 refugees resettled annually before September 11, the United States anticipates 27,000 resettlements in xi

16 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL CHAPTER FOUR: UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES! A number of individuals including two U.S. citizens continue to be held by the United States in military detention without access to counsel or family, based solely on the president s determination that they are enemy combatants. The executive s decision to declare someone an enemy combatant as opposed to a prisoner of war or criminal suspect appears unconstrained by any set of guiding principles. José Padilla and James Ujaama are both U.S. citizens, arrested in the United States, and accused of plotting with Al Qaeda. While Ujaama was criminally indicted and then entered a plea agreement, Padilla has never been formally charged with any offense. He has been held in incommunicado military detention for 15 months. Likewise, the executive accused U.S. citizens John Walker Lindh and Yaser Hamdi of participating in hostilities against the United States in Afghanistan. Lindh was prosecuted through the civilian criminal justice system, enjoying all due process protections available under the Constitution. Hamdi, in contrast, has remained in incommunicado detention for sixteen months. He has never seen a lawyer. The reasons for the differing treatment are unclear.! Advocates for the two U.S. citizens held as enemy combatants are actively challenging their detention in court challenges the Justice Department has vigorously resisted. In briefs filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit this summer, a wide range of experts (including the Lawyers Committee and the Cato Institute) argued that the executive s treatment of Padilla is illegal. They maintain that U.S. citizens are entitled to constitutional protections against arbitrary detention, including the right to counsel; the right to a jury trial; the right to be informed of the charges and confront witnesses against them. The Constitution identifies no enemy combatant exception to these rules. Further, 18 U.S.C. 4001(a) makes clear that [n]o citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress. The parties await a decision by the Second Circuit. In Hamdi s case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled largely in the executive s favor, but rejected the executive s sweeping proposition... that with no meaningful judicial review, any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely without charges or counsel on the government s say-so.! There are strong indications that the executive has threatened criminal defendants with designation as enemy combatants as a method of securing plea-bargained settlements in terrorism-related prosecutions. As defense counsel Patrick J. Brown explained with respect to a case involving six Arab-American U.S. citizens from Lackawanna, New York: We had to worry about [them] being whisked out of the courtroom and declared enemy combatants if the case started going well for us.... So we just ran up the white flag and folded. In a separate case, the president designated Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri an enemy combatant less than a month before his criminal trial was set to begin, placing him in incommunicado detention, dismissing his criminal indictment, and cutting him off from his lawyers who had been vigorously defending his case. The New York Times quoted one senior F.B.I. official as explaining that the Marri decision held clear implications for other terrorism suspects. If I were in their shoes, I d take a message from this. And executive officials have suggested that unfavorable procedural rulings xii

17 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATIONS in the Zacarias Moussaoui prosecution may lead them to consider dropping the case in federal court to pursue military commission proceedings under the president s control.! Since President Bush announced the creation of military commissions for non-citizens accused of committing violations of the laws of war and other applicable laws, the Defense Department has issued more detailed rules explaining commission procedures. Despite some improvements made by these rules, the commissions still provide markedly fewer safeguards than either U.S. criminal court or standard military court proceedings. The commissions allow for no appeal to any civilian court. The chargeable offenses expand military jurisdiction into areas never before considered subject to military justice. The government has broad discretion to close proceedings to outside scrutiny in the interest of national security. And defendants will be represented by assigned military lawyers even if they do not want them. Defendants will also be entitled to civilian lawyers, but unless a defendant can provide financing, civilian lawyers will receive no fees and will have to cover their own personal and case-related expenses. Civilian lawyers can be denied access to information including potential exculpatory evidence if the government thinks it necessary to protect the interests of the United States. The Defense Department may (without notice) monitor attorney-client consultations; and lawyers will be subject to sanction if they fail to reveal information they reasonably believe necessary to prevent significant harm to national security.! In early 2002, the U.S. military removed several hundred individuals from Afghanistan to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. About 660 detainees are now housed at Guantánamo including nationals from at least 40 countries, speaking 17 different languages. Three are children, the youngest aged 13. Since the camp opened, about 70 detainees, mainly Afghans and Pakistanis, have been released. There have been 32 reported suicide attempts. While U.S. officials originally asserted the Guantánamo prisoners are battlefield detainees who were engaged in combat in Afghanistan, some now held at Guantánamo were arrested in places far from Afghanistan. For example, two Guantánamo prisoners are U.K. residents who were arrested in November 2002 during a business trip to Gambia in West Africa. The Gambian police kept the two men in incommunicado detention for a month while Gambian and U.S. officials interrogated them. In December 2002, U.S. agents took the men to the U.S. military base at Bagram, Afghanistan, and, in March 2003, transported them to Guantánamo, where they remain.! On July 3, 2003, the Defense Department announced that six current detainees at Guantánamo had become eligible for trial by military commission. Among the six were two U.K. citizens and an Australian citizen. These designations sparked protests in the United Kingdom and Australia, close U.S. allies. The British advanced strong reservations about the military commission, and ultimately obtained some accommodations for the U.K detainees, including U.S. promises not to seek the death penalty or to monitor their consultations with counsel, and to consider letting them serve any sentence in British prisons. These promises were also extended to the Australian detainee. Despite widespread international criticism, the United States has thus far not afforded the same protections to nationals from any of the other countries represented at Guantánamo. xiii

18 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL CHAPTER FIVE: THE UNITED STATES AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS! In the two years since September 11, a growing number of foreign governments have passed aggressive new counterterrorism laws that undermine established norms of due process, including access to counsel and judicial review. On June 30, 2003, experts associated with the UN Commission on Human Rights issued a joint statement emphasizing their profound concern at the multiplication of policies, legislations and practices increasingly being adopted by many countries in the name of the fight against terrorism, which affect negatively the enjoyment of virtually all human rights civil, cultural, economic, political and social. They also drew attention to the dangers inherent in the indiscriminate use of the term terrorism, and the resulting new categories of discrimination.! The United States has been pressuring other governments to hand over Al Qaeda suspects, even when this violates the domestic law of those nations. In one such case, the government of Malawi secretly transferred five men to U.S. custody, in violation of a domestic court order. The men were held in unknown locations for five weeks before being released on July 30, 2003, reportedly cleared of any connection to Al Qaeda. In a separate incident, at the request of the U.S. government, Bosnian authorities transferred six Algerian men into U.S. custody, again in violation of that nation s domestic law. The Bosnian police had arrested the men, five of whom had Bosnian citizenship, in October 2001 on suspicion that they had links with Al Qaeda. In January 2002, the Bosnian Supreme Court ordered them released for lack of evidence. But instead of releasing them, Bosnian authorities handed them over to U.S. troops serving with NATO-led peacekeepers. Despite an injunction from the Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina, expressly ordering that four of the men remain in the country for further proceedings, the men were shortly thereafter transported to the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo. They remain there today.! During the past decade, there has been a steady erosion in states willingness to protect fleeing refugees. The events of September 11 added new momentum to this trend. States are reducing the rights of refugees who succeed in crossing their borders, increasingly returning refugees to their countries of origin to face persecution, and devising new ways to prevent refugees from arriving in their territory in the first place. Australia and Europe (led by the United Kingdom), for example, are considering extra-territorial processing and detention centers for refugees who seek asylum in Australia and the European Union, respectively.! According to a series of press reports, the CIA has been covertly transferring terrorism suspects to other countries for interrogation notably Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, which are known for employing coercive methods. Such transfers known as extraordinary renditions violate Article 3 of the UN Convention Against Torture, which prohibits signatory countries from sending anyone to another state when there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture. Some detainees are said to have been rendered with lists of specific questions that U.S. interrogators want answered. In others, the CIA reportedly plays no role in directing the xiv

19 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATIONS interrogations, but subsequently receives any information that emerges. Although the number of such renditions remains unknown, U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials have repeatedly (but anonymously) confirmed that they do take place. There have also been reports that U.S. forces have been using so-called stress and duress techniques in their own interrogations of terrorism suspects. Concerns about U.S. interrogation techniques intensified in December 2002 when two Afghan detainees died in U.S. custody at the U.S. military base in Bagram, Afghanistan. Their deaths were officially classified as homicides, resulting in part from blunt force trauma. The U.S. military launched a criminal investigation into the deaths in March The military is also investigating the June 2003 death of a third Afghan man, who reportedly died of a heart attack while in a U.S. holding facility in Asadabad, Afghanistan. RECOMMENDATIONS CHAPTER ONE: OPEN GOVERNMENT 1. Congress should pass a Restore FOIA Act to remedy the effects of overly broad provisions in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, including by narrowing the critical infrastructure information exemption. 2. Congress should remove the blanket exemption granted to DHS advisory committees from the open meeting and related requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. 3. Congress should convene oversight hearings to review the security and budgetary impact of post-september 11 changes in classification rules, including Executive Order provisions on initial classification decisions, and Homeland Security Act provisions on the protection of sensitive but unclassified information. 4. Congress should consider setting statutory guidelines for classifying national security information, including imposing a requirement that the executive show a demonstrable need to classify information in the name of national security. 5. The administration should modify the Creppy Directive to replace the blanket closure of special interest deportation hearings with a case-specific inquiry into the merits of closing a hearing. CHAPTER TWO: PERSONAL PRIVACY 1. Congress should repeal section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to restore safeguards against abuse of the seizure of business records, including records from libraries, bookstores, and educational institutions, where the danger of chilling free expression is greatest. Congress should also amend section 505 of the PATRIOT Act to require the FBI to obtain judicial authorization before it may obtain information from telephone companies, internet service providers, or credit reporting agencies. xv

20 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL 2. Congress should review changes to FBI guidelines that relax restrictions on surveillance of domestic religious and political organizations to ensure that there are adequate checks on executive authority in the domestic surveillance arena. The guidelines should be specifically amended to better protect against the use of counterterrorism surveillance tools for purely criminal investigations. 3. Congress should delay implementation of the Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre- Screening System II pending an independent expert assessment of the system s feasibility, potential impact on personal privacy, and mechanisms for error correction. Separately, Congress should immediately eliminate all funding for Total [or Terrorism] Information Awareness research and development. 4. The Terrorist Threat Integration Center should be housed within DHS where it may be subject to oversight by departmental and congressional officials who can ensure investigation of possible abuses and enforcement of civil rights and civil liberties. 5. Congress should establish a senior position responsible for civil rights and civil liberties matters within the DHS Office of the Inspector General. This position would report directly to the Inspector General, and be charged with coordinating and investigating civil rights and civil liberties matters in DHS. CHAPTER THREE: IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES, AND MINORITIES 1. The Justice Department and DHS should continue cooperating with the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General (OIG) by implementing the remaining recommendations addressing the treatment of the September 11 detainees by the OIG s October 3, 2003 deadline. In addition, Congress should require the OIG to report semiannually any complaints of alleged abuses of civil liberties by DHS employees and officials, including government efforts to address any such complaints. 2. The Justice Department should rescind the expanded custody procedures regulation that allows non-citizens to be detained for extended periods without notice of the charges against them, as well as the expanded regulation permitting automatic stays of immigration judge bond decisions. 3. The president should direct the attorney general to vacate his decision in In re DJ and restore prior law recognizing that immigration detainees are entitled to an individualized assessment of their eligibility for release from detention. Congress should enact a law making clear that arriving asylum seekers should have their eligibility for release assessed by an immigration judge. 4. The administration should fully revive its Refugee Resettlement Program and publicly affirm the United States commitment to restoring resettlement numbers to pre-2001 levels (90,000 refugees each year). It should ensure that adequate resources are devoted to refugee security checks so that these procedures do not cause unnecessary delays. xvi

21 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATIONS 5. The Justice Department should respect the judgment of local law enforcement officials and cease efforts to enlist local officials in the enforcement of federal immigration law. CHAPTER FOUR: UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES 1. The administration should provide U.S. citizens José Padilla and Yaser Hamdi immediate access to legal counsel. These individuals, and all those arrested in the United States and designated by the president as enemy combatants, should be afforded the constitutional protections due to defendants facing criminal prosecution in the United States. 2. The Justice Department should prohibit federal prosecutors from using, explicitly or implicitly, the threat of indefinite detention or military commission trials as leverage in criminal plea bargaining or in criminal prosecutions. 3. The U.S. government should carry out its obligations under the Third Geneva Convention and U.S. military regulations with regard to all those detained by the United States at Guantánamo and other such detention camps around the world. In particular, the administration should provide these detainees with an individualized hearing in which their status as civilians or prisoners of war may be determined. Detainees outside the United States as to whom a competent tribunal has found grounds for suspecting violations of the law of war should, without delay, be brought to trial by court martial under the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice. Those determined not to have participated directly in armed conflict should be released immediately or, if appropriate, criminally charged. 4. President Bush should rescind his November 13, 2001 Military Order establishing military commissions, and the procedural regulations issued thereunder. 5. The administration should affirm that U.S. law does not permit indefinite detention solely for purposes of investigation, and that suggestions to the contrary in the Declaration of Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby (USN) do not reflect administration policy. CHAPTER FIVE: THE UNITED STATES AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS 1. The United States should publicly renounce efforts by other governments to use global counterterrorism efforts as a cover for repressive policies toward journalists, human rights activists, political opponents, or other domestic critics. 2. As a signal of its commitment to take human rights obligations seriously, the United States should submit a report to the UN Human Rights Committee on the current state of U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The United States ratified the ICCPR in 1992, but has not reported to the Human Rights Committee since The United States should affirm its obligation to not extradite, expel, or otherwise return any individual to a place where he faces a substantial likelihood of torture. All reported xvii

22 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL violations of this obligation should be independently investigated. The United States should also independently investigate reports that U.S. officers have used stress and duress techniques in interrogating terrorism suspects, and it should make public the findings of the military investigations into the deaths of three Afghan detainees in U.S. custody. 4. The United States should respect the domestic laws of other countries, particularly the judgments of other nations courts and human rights tribunals enforcing international law. 5. The United States should encourage all countries to ensure that national security measures are compatible with the protections afforded refugees under international law. xviii

23 CHAPTER ONE OPEN GOVERNMENT INTRODUCTION A growing preoccupation with secrecy has affected all three branches of government in the two years since September 11. A series of legal and policy decisions has made it more difficult for Congress, the courts, and the American public to oversee the operations of the executive branch. Despite signs of increased concern about these changes by Congress in recent months, the normalization of secrecy shows little sign of abating. This chapter examines how a framework of increased secrecy has developed encompassing both specific initiatives and a more general pattern of less openness about the way important executive branch decisions are made. The chapter details both of these phenomena and illustrates the consequences of these changes for the values promoted by open government. Finally, it addresses the types of responses needed particularly given that, in the absence of a formal declaration of war or a traditional, focused external threat, the current security climate may persist indefinitely. LEGAL BACKGROUND A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or Tragedy; or, perhaps both. 1 James Madison In the democracy envisioned by Madison, effective checks against arbitrary power flow from a government structure in which each branch of government shares information about its activities with the others, and in which the people themselves have access to information about the way government works. Government has always had vital interests in keeping some information secret protecting intelligence sources and methods and ensuring the safety of military operations among them. But the past half century in particular has seen the creation of an elaborate system of rules designed to protect government s most important secrets a system that increasingly has encroached on Madison s vision that the operations of the U.S. government would be open to its people. Most of the rules of this secrecy system have been set forth in a series of executive orders, beginning with President Harry S. Truman in 1951 and continuing through President George W. Bush earlier this year. 2 Through these directives, the executive branch has established standards for how national security information should be classified, the different categories of information eligible for classification, and the general grounds on which government secrets should be established and maintained. 1

24 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL Not long after the first such executive order was issued, a special committee convened by President Eisenhower s Secretary of Defense warned that the classification system was already so overloaded that proper protection of information which should be protected has suffered, and that the mass of classified papers has inevitably resulted in a casual attitude toward classified information, at least on the part of many. 3 Partly in response to such concerns, 4 Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966 and strengthened it substantially in FOIA established a presumption that executive branch documents would be available to the public subject only to carefully defined exceptions, and that judicial review would be available as a check on agency decisions to withhold information. In signing FOIA into law on July 4, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson emphasized its chief objective: This legislation springs from one of our most essential principles: a democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the nation permits. No one should be able to pull curtains of secrecy around decisions which can be revealed without injury to the public interest. 6 THE NEW NORM OF GOVERNMENT SECRECY Much the same way the indiscriminate use of antibiotics reduces their effectiveness in combating infections, classifying either too much information or for too long can reduce the effectiveness of the classification system, which, more than anything else, is dependent upon the confidence of the people touched by it. While there is always a temptation to err on the side of caution, especially in times of war, the challenge for agencies is to similarly avoid damaging the nation s security by hoarding information. 7 J. William Leonard, Director, Information Security Oversight Office National Archives and Records Administration There is some historical precedent for the expanded government secrecy of the past two years; the first and second World Wars and the early years of the Cold War all saw some level of expansion. But the scope of executive branch initiatives to restrict access to information since September 11 has been broader than in the past. More than during previous periods of heightened security concern, the post-september 11 executive has made secrecy rather than disclosure its default position. According to data collected by the Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives and Records Administration (ISOO), the number of classification actions by the executive branch rose 14 percent in 2002 over 2001 and declassification activity fell to its lowest level in seven years. 8 Both in limiting the disclosure of basic information and in denying the public access to executive decision-making processes, the new normal is a democracy with diminished ability to check the exercise of government power, and increased risk of missing information vital to security. 2

25 OPEN GOVERNMENT Restricting the Flow of Information For nearly four decades, and especially since its enhancement in 1974, FOIA has played a central role in expanding public access to executive information, subject to a series of nine carefully delineated exceptions. 13 Beginning before September 11 and accelerating in the two years since, the administration has sought to restrict FOIA both by (1) expanding the reach of existing statutory exemptions, and (2) adding a new critical infrastructure exemption. While the effects of the latter THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT As the U.S. Supreme Court explained in 1973, initiative remain unclear, recent court cases FOIA seeks to permit access to official on the expansion of existing exemptions information long shielded unnecessarily from verify the extent of the threat to openness public view and attempts to create a judicially posed by the new restrictions. enforceable public right to secure such information from possibly unwilling official hands. 9 Under The Ashcroft Directive In October 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a new directive to the heads of executive agencies that announced two key changes in previous executive branch practice. First, it encouraged the presumptive refusal of any FOIA request over which departments and agencies could exercise discretion. Second, it reversed previous Justice Department policy to defend an agency s refusal to release information only where release would result in foreseeable harm ; instead, the department would now defend any refusal to release information as long as it had a sound legal basis. 14 FOIA, any person may file an application for access to any document, file, or other record in the possession of an executive agency without demonstrating any need for the information requested. 10 An agency must release the information requested under FOIA unless it falls within one of the statutory exemptions. If the agency decides to withhold the information, the applicant can challenge that decision in court where the agency bears the burden of showing that its refusal was legitimate. 11 Courts have generally shown some deference to an agency s determination that a certain exception applies, but such determinations must be clear, specific, and adequately detailed; they must describe the withheld information and the reason for nondisclosure in a factual and non-conclusory manner; and they must be submitted in good faith. 12 This was anything but a temporary, emergency approach limited to the immediate aftermath of September 11. Subsequent memoranda, including from White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, further encouraged agencies to use FOIA exemptions to withhold sensitive but non-classified material a loosely-defined category of information (discussed in more detail below) that could include information voluntarily submitted to the executive from the private sector. As one such memorandum explained: All departments and agencies should ensure that in taking necessary and appropriate actions to safeguard sensitive but unclassified information related to America s homeland security, they process any Freedom of Information Act request for records containing such information in accordance with the Attorney General s FOIA Memorandum of October 12, 2001, by giving full and careful 3

26 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL consideration to all applicable FOIA exemptions.... In the case of information that is voluntarily submitted to the Government from the private sector, such information may readily fall within the protection of Exemption 4 of the FOIA, 5 U.S.C. 552 (b)(4). 15 Recent court decisions have bolstered the administration s success in expanding the reach of FOIA exemptions. In American Civil Liberties Union v. U.S. Department of Justice, the district court denied the ACLU s request for information concerning how often the Justice Department had utilized its expanded surveillance and investigative authority under the PATRIOT Act. 16 To prevent disclosure, the administration invoked FOIA Exemption 1, which permits the withholding of information specifically authorized by an executive order to be kept secret in the interests of national defense or foreign policy. 17 While the court acknowledged the plaintiffs arguments that the disclosure sought would not harm national security because it would not involve any particular records or other information on current surveillance, 18 it determined that plaintiffs could not overcome the agency s expert judgment that withholding the information is authorized... because it is reasonably connected to the protection of national security. 19 Of perhaps greater significance is Center for National Security Studies v. U.S. Department of Justice, in which a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the executive s assertion that FOIA Exemption 7(A) could be used to withhold the names of those detained in the course of investigations following September 11, as well as other information about the detainees, such as the locations, dates, and rationale for their detention. 20 In contrast to earlier rulings requiring that the executive s explanation for withholding information be reasonably specific, 21 the majority broadly deferred to the executive branch in accepting its assertion that disclosure of the requested information could be expected to interfere with law enforcement proceedings explaining simply we owe deference to the government s judgments contained in its affidavits. 22 This change in approach greatly concerned dissenting Judge David Tatel, who warned that the court s uncritical deference to the government s vague, poorly explained arguments for withholding broad categories of information... eviscerates both FOIA and the principles of openness in government that FOIA embodies. 23 Judge Tatel acknowledged that some of the requested information without question should be exempt from disclosure, but added that the request should not be denied in its entirety: This all-or-nothing approach runs directly counter to well-established principles governing FOIA requests... the government bears the burden of identifying functional categories of information that are exempt from disclosure, and disclosing any reasonably segregable, non-exempt portion of the requested materials. 24 Judge Tatel called for a more particularized approach to identifying and explaining how the information pending release could negatively affect national security. As Judge Tatel noted, requiring executive agencies to make the detailed showing the FOIA requires is not second-guessing their judgment about matters within their expertise, but rather applying the law 4

27 OPEN GOVERNMENT as it was intended and ensuring that the judicial branch retains a meaningful role in reviewing FOIA exemption requests. 25 Critical Infrastructure Exemption In November 2002, Congress passed an expansive critical infrastructure exemption introduced by the administration as part of the Homeland Security Act of The new exemption provides that all information submitted to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that is not customarily in the public domain and related to the security or critical infrastructure or protected systems is not subject to disclosure under FOIA. 27 While this new exemption has not yet been utilized to deny access to information under FOIA, and DHS has been slow to publish implementing regulations, it is potentially far-reaching and appears broad enough to withhold a wide range of both private and governmental information. Indeed, proposed regulations to implement the exemption broadly state the type of information that may be restricted and also fail to require that those providing the information substantiate their claim that it falls within the critical infrastructure category. 28 The administration has argued that the new exemption is necessary to facilitate information sharing; chemical and other firms had claimed that they would be reluctant to provide information to the government if they thought it would become public. However, FOIA already contains clear exemptions for confidential business information, as well as national security information. 29 Further, while the intention of the new exemption obviously is to enhance security, to the extent that it prevents disclosure of information showing wrongdoing or ineptitude by private parties it could weaken incentives for private entities to address ongoing or potential problems. Finally, the new exemption could limit public access to critical health, safety, and environmental information submitted by businesses to the executive for example, the status of a safety problem at a nuclear power plant, or a chemical facility producing toxic materials and located in a densely populated urban neighborhood. 30 This risk is particularly troubling because critical infrastructure information cannot be used against the submitting party in any civil action provided it was submitted in good faith. Even if the information reveals that a firm is violating health, safety, or environmental laws, DHS cannot bring a civil action based on that information. 31 The potential danger posed by the still-unused critical infrastructure exemption has greatly concerned some members of Congress. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), for example, warned that the exemption represented the most severe weakening of FOIA to date. 32 To address such concerns, Senators Leahy, Carl Levin (D-MI), Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), James Jeffords (I-VT), and Robert Byrd (D-WV), and Representatives Barney Frank (D-MA) and Tom Udall (D-NM), introduced the Restoration of Freedom of Information Act of 2003 earlier this year. 33 The Restore FOIA Act, as its proponents have termed it, narrows the definition of critical infrastructure information to focus on records directly related to the vulnerabilities of 5

28 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL and threats to such infrastructure, and limits the exemption to include only information the government could not have obtained without voluntary submission by private firms. 34 It allows for disclosure of records an agency receives independently from DHS and requires that DHS make available any portion of an exempted record that can be segregated. It removes the exemption of communication of critical infrastructure information from open meeting requirements. Finally, it removes the prohibition on using critical infrastructure information against the submitter in a civil action. 35 In short, the new legislation is intended to address concerns such as those expressed by Mark Tapscott, the Director of the Heritage Foundation s Center for Media and Public Policy, who noted that without such narrowing and clarification the provision could be manipulated by clever corporate and government operators to hide endless varieties of potentially embarrassing and/or criminal information from public view. 36 Classifying New Information: A Presumption of Secrecy Executive Order Executive Order (E.O ), issued by President Bush on March 28, 2003, represents another example of the expanding default to secrecy easing the burden on executive officials responsible for deciding whether to classify in the first instance, and making it more difficult for the public to gain access to information. The latest in a series of presidential orders dating back over half a century to govern the classification (and procedures for later declassification) of national security information, 37 E.O modifies the order issued by the previous administration in 1995 in certain important respects. 38 While the new order preserves some important elements of its predecessor, including the interagency classification review panel that has prompted increased declassification of older documents, 39 it promotes greater secrecy by: (1) allowing the executive to delay the release of certain documents; (2) giving the executive new powers to reclassify previously released information; 40 (3) broadening exceptions to declassification; and (4) lowering the standard under which information is exempted from release from requiring that it should be expected to result in harm to that it could be expected to have that result. 41 Perhaps most important, E.O removes a provision from the 1995 executive order mandating that [i]f there is significant doubt about the need to classify information, it shall not be classified. 42 This seemingly minor deletion has the effect of changing the default setting from do not classify to classify likely promoting the classification of more documents, with attendant costs for both government operations and public knowledge. As Thomas Blanton, Executive Director of the National Security Archive, notes, E.O thus sends one more signal... to the bureaucracy to slow down, stall, withhold, stonewall. 43 Executive Order builds upon other efforts to make it easier to classify a wider range of information. In three separate executive orders, the current administration expanded the authority to classify documents to include the Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 44 While 6

29 OPEN GOVERNMENT those officials already had means of protecting information, they previously had not had the original classification authority typically vested in officials at departments and agencies engaged in core national security activities. Homeland Security Information: Sensitive but Unclassified We re talking about the safety and security of people who would be better protected by this report.... This is just bad public policy. If there s something that needs to be redacted, take it out. 45 David Heyman, Center for Strategic and International Studies (on the Defense Department s decision to keep secret his report on public preparation for bioterrorism attacks) A little-noticed provision of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 may prove to be a significant barrier to congressional and public access to a wide range of information. Ironically, this provision, which requires the president to prescribe and implement procedures to identify and safeguard homeland security information that is sensitive but unclassified, is contained in the section of the act on information sharing. 46 This open-ended language, enacted with little debate or scrutiny, gives the executive branch wide discretion to withhold vast amounts of information even without the need to do so through formal classification. Most of the provision s terms, including sensitive but unclassified, are not defined. And homeland security information is defined so broadly with respect to counterterrorism activities as to potentially encompass a wide range of information extending well beyond what traditionally has been classified under executive orders for national security purposes. 47 Moreover, unlike the critical infrastructure information provision of the act discussed above, there is no savings clause a provision that would require information that falls within this potentially sweeping category to be revealed if another statute or regulation mandates such disclosure. 48 In other words, the sweeping language of the Homeland Security Act could trump disclosure provided for under a previously enacted law. Finally, the provision grants full control over managing and sharing such homeland security information to the president, who is required only to submit a report to Congress on the section s implementation by November 25, How the executive branch will implement this provision remains unclear. One recent example that might prove illustrative involves the Defense Department s refusal over the past year to release an unclassified report on lessons learned from the anthrax attacks in late That report, the outgrowth of a December 2001 meeting organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and funded by the Department s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, included recommendations for improving the nation s preparation for future bioterrorism attacks. 50 However, the Defense Department determined that the report should be treated as For 7

30 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL Official Use Only (a category of restricting access to unclassified information analogous to sensitive but unclassified ) and refused to release any portion of it to the public. The homeland security information provision represents a sweeping new delegation of authority to expand secrecy well beyond formal classification procedures in a manner that is likely to further impair Congress oversight responsibilities. Whether Congress will step in to try to mitigate this potential remains uncertain. Withdrawal of Information Previously Released The administration also has removed information previously available to the public from government websites. The deletions have extended beyond highly sensitive materials that may have been posted inadvertently to also reach general program information. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration removed data from its website regarding enforcement actions against air carriers. And the EPA removed risk management plans that provide important information about the dangers of chemical accidents and emergency response mechanisms. These actions were taken despite the fact that such information may be important for those planning to fly and those living near chemical plants; in the case of the information withdrawn by the EPA, the FBI had explicitly stated that its availability presented no unique terrorist threat. 51 Limiting Congressional Oversight Open and transparent procedures for making government decisions are crucial for congressional and public oversight and, in turn, an understanding of the terms and consequences of the policy decisions that emerge. Just as the developments summarized above demonstrate a growing presumption of information secrecy, the increase in secrecy surrounding the processes of executive branch decision-making reveals a default instinct to remove such processes from public view. This has been evidenced in the past year by the secrecy surrounding consideration of provisions to expand the PATRIOT Act, efforts to withhold information in the congressional report on September 11 intelligence failures, and the denial of access to meetings of key DHS private sector advisors. The PATRIOT Act and the Justice Department We want to make sure that what we pass in Congress works the way we wanted it to, and that the money is spent the way we intended. We need a maximum flow of information to make the separation of powers work. 52 Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) The past year has been marked by several clashes between senior members of Congress and the administration over access to information on the implementation of the PATRIOT Act. Following denials by the Justice Department of information he considered relevant, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) threatened to subpoena documents relating to the act s implementation prompting the Justice Department to respond to some of 8

31 OPEN GOVERNMENT the committee s questions. 53 The Department initially answered 28 of the 50 questions from the committee, but indicated in most responses that the information was classified. 54 When Senator Patrick Leahy, ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, then submitted 93 questions, including the 50 already posed by the House Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department responded to only 56 of them in a sequence of three letters though it shared certain other information with the intelligence committees. The Justice Department and the FBI had also repeatedly refused to provide Judiciary Committee members with a copy of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court s May 17, 2002 opinion rejecting the Department s proposed implementation of the PATRIOT Act s FISA amendments, 55 and criticizing aspects of the FBI s past performance on FISA warrants. 56 (FISA and its implementation are discussed in detail in Chapter 2.) In response, in February 2003, Senators Leahy, Grassley, and Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced the Domestic Surveillance Oversight Act of 2003, intended as one means of reasserting a portion of Congress oversight authority. 57 The bill modifies FISA by adding to its public reporting requirements. It directs the attorney general to include, in an annual public report on FISA, the aggregate number of U.S. persons targeted for any type of order under the act, as well as information about the total number of times FISA is used for criminal cases or law enforcement purposes. Expressing the importance of greater oversight regarding the changes adopted in the PATRIOT Act more generally, 58 Senator Leahy explained: Before we give the government more power to conduct surveillance on its own citizens, we must look at how it is using the power that it already has. We must answer two questions: Is that power being used effectively, so that our citizens not only feel safer, but are in fact safer? Is that power being used appropriately, so that our liberties are not sacrificed? 59 These remarks came in the context of a series of moves by the Justice Department to restrict Congress access to information in its oversight capacity. For example, on March 27, 2003, the Department issued a directive telling its employees to inform the Department s Office of Legislative Affairs of all potential briefings on Capitol Hill and significant, substantive conversations with staff and members on Capitol Hill.... We will assist in determining the appropriateness of proceeding with potential briefings. 60 Senator Grassley attacked the directive as an attempt to control information. 61 Senator Leahy noted that the administration s overwhelming impulse has been to limit the flow of information, and that has made congressional oversight of this Justice Department a never-ending ordeal. 62 Indeed, the March directive came on the heels of controversy regarding the development and drafting of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, commonly known as PATRIOT II. 63 Its provisions, including those expanding the authorization of secret arrests, the expedited loss of U.S. citizenship, and deportation powers, raise profound human rights and civil liberty concerns. Although rumors of a draft had circulated for months prior to its leak in early February 2003, Justice Department officials repeatedly had denied that they were preparing any new legislation. As late as February 3, just four days before the draft was leaked, 9

32 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL Department officials assured Senator Leahy s staff that the Justice Department was not drafting any such proposals. At a hearing before the Committee on March 4, 2003, Senator Leahy told Attorney General Ashcroft bluntly: Somebody who reports directly to you lied... and I think that this is not a good way to do things.... I think it shows a secretive process in developing this. 64 Faced with strong reactions from other members of Congress and the press, Attorney General Ashcroft continued to deny that the administration had planned to present a PATRIOT II proposal to Congress only acknowledging that the administration was continuing to think expansively about the relevant issues and not ruling out the prospect that certain proposals might be submitted to Congress at some future time. At the same time, he appeared to rule out the possibility of any advance consultation with the committees of jurisdiction, stating at a March 4 Senate Judiciary hearing: Until I have something I think is appropriate, I don t know that I should engage in some sort of discussion. 65 The administration has not acknowledged the concerns about process including whether given the substantial interest in the implementation of the PATRIOT Act there should have been consultation with Congress on the issues under consideration. Despite the controversial provisions being considered, the draft apparently was forwarded only to Vice President Cheney (in his capacity as President of the Senate) and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL). 66 House Judiciary Committee Chairman Sensenbrenner expressed concerns about the scope of the proposal and the lack of congressional consultation: [A]s I stressed during legislative consideration of the PATRIOT Act, my support for this legislation is neither perpetual nor unconditional. I believe the Department and Congress must be vigilant. 67 Despite this, recent reports suggest that the Justice Department continues to work on a version of similar legislation behind closed doors 68 consistent with calls by the president and attorney general for expanded powers to arrest, detain, and seek the death penalty. 69 While controversy over PATRIOT II may make it too difficult to submit the bill as a single integrated package, pieces of the leaked draft coupled with other proposals may be introduced separately in the coming months. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is expected to introduce one such bill, the VICTORY Act, in the fall of One provision of this bill would grant the Justice Department the authority to seize private records in terrorism investigations through the use of administrative subpoenas, bypassing the federal courts (as discussed in Chapter 2). 71 President Bush publicly endorsed this proposal in a speech at the FBI Academy on September 10, 2003, claiming that current law posed unreasonable obstacles to investigating and prosecuting terrorism. 72 In August 2003, just after the draft of the VICTORY Act became public, Attorney General Ashcroft launched a campaign aimed at convincing the American people of the need for the Justice Department s expanded powers under the PATRIOT Act. 73 Ironically, that campaign has been closed to the public. 74 Although the attorney general has been traveling the country to shore up support for the PATRIOT Act, in nearly every city he has visited so far he addressed only a pre-screened group of law enforcement officers in closed sessions. 75 And following each speech, the attorney general has refused to take questions, even from newspaper journalists trying to report on what he said

33 OPEN GOVERNMENT FACA and the Department of Homeland Security An additional limit on oversight has been through the exemption of advisory committees constituted by DHS from the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Enacted in 1972, FACA is intended to limit the ability of interest groups to influence public policy by making Congress and the public aware of the composition and activities of advisory committees set up by the executive branch. Such advisory committees often serve as the primary instrument for outside input into executive branch decision-making. FACA mandates that such committees announce their meetings, hold them in public, provide for representation of differing viewpoints, and make their materials available. The act also provides exemptions on the basis of national security for shielding from disclosure certain information and activities. 77 Under Section 871 of the Homeland Security Act however, DHS advisory committees are exempt from FACA s requirements, and the committees thus may meet in secret. 78 As a result, their activities and reports will be shielded from scrutiny, regardless of the subject matter under review or the interests of the advisory committee members. This broad carve-out, which covers advisory committee engagement with components of DHS previously located in other departments where they were subject to FACA requirements, extends well beyond the focused exemptions that already existed in FACA and could have been utilized by DHS. In an effort to address this carve-out, Senator Robert Byrd offered an amendment to require disclosure of the recommendations of DHS advisory committees, as well as information on the members of such committees. Senator Byrd expressed concern about the exemption from public disclosure in light of what he termed the specter of a conflict of interest saying the amendment would help build greater public confidence in the security efforts of DHS. The amendment was rejected on a largely party-line vote of The September 11 Report and the Withholding of Selected Information My judgment is that 95 percent of that information could be declassified, become uncensored, so the American people would know. 79 Richard Shelby (R-AL), Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman A highly publicized dispute over the classification of Congress own work product further highlights the tension between the branches concerning restrictions on the release of information. Following the completion of a lengthy joint report of the House and Senate intelligence committees on the intelligence failures leading to the September 11 attacks, an administration working group coordinated by the CIA redacted more than two-thirds of the report s text including some sections that had already been discussed publicly. Recognizing the implications for effective oversight and understanding of what had gone wrong prior to September 11, a bipartisan group of committee members protested the reach of the CIA s classification process and threatened to use for the first time an obscure, 26-year old Senate rule (Senate Resolution 400) to declassify the document themselves over administration objections. 80 Faced with this 11

34 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL bipartisan threat, the administration scaled back the scope of information that it insisted be redacted. 81 Despite this, when the report finally was released in mid-july 2003, controversy erupted over key sections that remained classified. While acknowledging the importance of keeping certain information classified to protect intelligence sources and methods, members of Congress raised new concerns about the redaction of other parts of the report. Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby stated that he thought certain sections had been classified for the wrong reasons, referring specifically to a 28-page section dealing with alleged foreign support for terrorism. 82 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), also involved in the September 11 inquiry as a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, emphasized the difficulty in disseminating its findings: It took us nine months to do our entire investigation.... It took six and a half months to... get this declassified version out.... They do not want to reveal information that should be available to the public.... We need to protect the American people in the future. This secrecy does not serve that purpose. 83 As of August 2003, 46 senators had signed a letter to the president, circulated by Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Sam Brownback (R-KS), requesting that the White House declassify additional portions of the report. 84 Senate Resolution 400 requires a majority vote to disclose such information over administration objections. 85 In early August, the Democratic members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, led by Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), endorsed additional declassification of the portions of the report withheld, saying that there is a compelling national interest in doing so, and expanded declassification will not compromise important intelligence activities. 86 This left open the prospect for a battle between Congress and the executive and possible unilateral legislative action to release portions of the still-classified sections if a compromise cannot be reached. The Courts Deference to Secrecy Among the most troubling examples of expanded secrecy has been the sustained effort of executive branch officials to close certain immigration proceedings that have traditionally been open an effort that began immediately after September 11 and has continued in the two years since. Ten days after the September 11 attacks, Chief Immigration Judge Michael Creppy issued a directive requiring immigration judges to implement a full information blackout on any case deemed of special interest by the Justice Department. 87 The so-called Creppy Directive closes hearings involving such special interest detainees and also prohibits court administrators from listing the cases on dockets or confirming when hearings will be held. The restrictions prevent detainees families and members of the news media from attending the hearings. In North Jersey Media Group, Inc. v. Ashcroft, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, reversing the district court below, accepted the credible, although somewhat speculative national security concerns that the attorney general had used to justify this blanket directive. 88 The court acknowledged that it was quite hesitant to conduct a judicial inquiry into the credibility of these security concerns, given a tradition of great deference to Executive 12

35 OPEN GOVERNMENT expertise. 89 A dissenting judge accepted the general concept of deference in national security cases, but rejected the Creppy Directive s blanket closure approach and called for reinstituting the authority of immigration judges to conduct a case-by-case analysis. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reached a very different conclusion in Detroit Free Press v. Ashcroft 90 acknowledging the principle of deference to the executive on national security issues, and the interests asserted by the government for closure, but holding that there is a First Amendment right of access to deportation hearings and that a blanket closure of such hearings was impermissible. In its ruling, the court noted the important role that public access plays in ensuring that procedures are fair and government does not make mistakes. 91 Despite this split of appellate authority, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the decisions. 92 As it stands, openness advocates may look to the Sixth Circuit in Detroit Free Press, and the dissent in North Jersey Media Group, both of which criticized the Creppy Directive for not requiring particularized decisions, narrowly tailored so as to restrict only information that would damage national security. The Question of Security Law enforcement communities were fighting a war against terrorism largely without the benefit of what some would call their most potent weapon in that effort: an alert and committed American public. 93 Eleanor Hill, Staff Director of the Joint U.S. House-Senate Intelligence Committee While Congress has often yielded quickly to the executive s insistence on secrecy since September 11, some members have begun efforts to recapture some of the access to information that existed prior to the terrorist attacks giving cause to question whether the new norm of secrecy can be sustained. Some of this stepped-up legislative attention has arisen out of the recognition by members, including many who traditionally have deferred to the executive branch on matters of national security, of the rapid increase in the scope of secrecy and its consequences for their own oversight activities and capabilities. One example is illustrative. In testimony in May 2003 before a commission investigating the events of September 11, Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL), Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, testified that we overclassify very badly... there s a lot of gratuitous classification going on, adding that the dysfunctional classification system remains his Committee s greatest challenge. 94 Chairman Goss endorsed the efforts made in the 1990s by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had chaired a two-year bipartisan commission investigating government secrecy that raised concerns about overclassification and issued recommendations to narrow the scope and duration of government secrets. While he had not previously identified himself with those efforts, Chairman Goss now suggested that perhaps they did not go far enough

36 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL Members of Congress with strong security credentials are also recognizing that where secrecy is used to cover up procedural deficiencies within either the government or private sector, it can permit security vulnerabilities and other dangers to go unnoticed and unaddressed, in turn making it harder to correct any errors. 96 And they understand that secrecy can breed increased distrust in governmental institutions. As Senator John McCain (R-AZ) noted in testimony in May 2003: Excessive administration secrecy on issues related to the September 11 attacks feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public s confidence in government. 97 As many of these members are realizing, too much secrecy may well result in less security. A system that, in the words of the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office, is often not perceived as being discerning with respect to what should be secret in turn carries the risk of reduced accountability and missed opportunities for needed information sharing both within the government and with the American people. 98 RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Congress should pass a Restore FOIA Act to remedy the effects of overly broad provisions in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, including by narrowing the critical infrastructure exemption. 2. Congress should remove the blanket exemption granted to DHS advisory committees from the open meeting and related requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. 3. Congress should convene oversight hearings to review the security and budgetary impact of post-september 11 changes in classification rules, including Executive Order provisions on initial classification decisions, and Homeland Security Act provisions on the protection of sensitive but unclassified information. 4. Congress should consider setting statutory guidelines for classifying national security information, including imposing a requirement that the executive show a demonstrable need to classify information in the name of national security. 5. The administration should modify the Creppy Directive to replace the blanket closure of special interest deportation hearings with a case-specific inquiry into the merits of closing a hearing. 14

37 CHAPTER TWO PERSONAL PRIVACY INTRODUCTION The past two years have seen growing bipartisan concern that Fourth Amendment safeguards against arbitrary governmental intrusion are being eroded in the name of national security. The law regulating the executive branch s authority to pry into Americans private lives has changed dramatically since September 11. Attorney General John Ashcroft lifted restrictions that had limited FBI monitoring of domestic religious, civic, or political organizations. The PATRIOT Act lowered the standards for clandestine searches, electronic eavesdropping, and secret access to customer records and personal information. The executive has initiated a range of datamining projects designed to search through vast amounts of personal information, looking for patterns of suspicious behavior. These changes have raised fears that bedrock principles of individualized suspicion and presumptive innocence have been replaced with a new normal of generalized suspicion and surveillance. In the face of these initiatives, citizens, city councilors, librarians, and legislators from across the political spectrum have begun to challenge the expansion of federal surveillance powers. Bipartisan opposition put an end to the proposed neighbor-to-neighbor spying program Operation TIPS. Three states, as well as 162 towns, counties, and cities have passed resolutions affirming their commitment to civil liberties in the face of encroachments by the PATRIOT Act. 99 Librarians and booksellers have joined a bipartisan group of congressional representatives to press for legislation protecting library and bookstore records from governmental surveillance without judicial supervision. Congress has continued to assert its oversight authority in demanding additional explanation about the scope of the Terrorist (formerly Total) Information Awareness program. The U.S. House of Representatives also voted to roll back authorization for so-called sneak and peek warrants that allowed law enforcement to covertly search through private property and then further delay notification of the search. The recent congressional engagement is encouraging. But more needs to be done to ensure that the tools entrusted to the executive to secure the nation from terrorist attack are consistent with Americans expectations of privacy. The need for ongoing, stringent oversight of the executive s sweeping new information-gathering powers is starkly highlighted by the General Accounting Office s (GAO) June 2003 conclusion that, even without additional databases for tracking airline passengers and identifying patterns of terrorist activity, the government cannot adequately assure the public that all legislated individual privacy rights are being protected

38 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL LEGAL BACKGROUND The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 101 Fourth Amendment, U.S. Constitution The Fourth Amendment protects our persons, houses, papers, and effects from arbitrary governmental intrusion by requiring authorities to demonstrate that a search is reasonable and based on probable cause to suspect criminal activity. As the U.S. Supreme Court has explained, Fourth Amendment limitations on the executive branch s search and seizure powers are designed to prevent arbitrary and oppressive interference by enforcement officials with the privacy and personal security of individuals. 102 It protects what is in essence, our right to be let alone, a right which U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis termed the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men. 103 The right to be let alone also protects the exercise of other fundamental rights, such as the freedom of speech and freedom of religion, which may be chilled by governmental monitoring. The right to privacy is also protected by international law. Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the United States is a party, protects privacy rights in similar terms. Just as the right to free speech is protected by the First Amendment, freedom of expression is protected by Article 19 of the ICCPR. And Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that [n]o one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence. 104 THE PATRIOT ACT In post-patriot America, the FBI no longer needs individualized evidence to suspect that a person is connected to terrorism in order to trawl through a person s reading material, rental car records, school grades, and favorite internet sites, looking for signs of suspicious activity. The PATRIOT Act also allows law enforcement officials to direct the use of highly intrusive surveillance techniques, traditionally available exclusively for foreign intelligence gathering, for investigations that are primarily criminal in nature. This means that federal agents who lack probable cause to get a criminal wiretap may obtain the information they want simply by indicating the case has a purpose connected to foreign intelligence. Access to Personal Records I think the Patriot Act was not really thought out... in our desire for security and our enthusiasm for pursuing supposed[] terrorists,.. we might be on the verge of giving up the freedoms which we re trying to protect... I don t think it s anybody s business what I m reading in the library. 105 Representative Don Young (R-AK) 16

39 PERSONAL PRIVACY Sections 215 and 505 of the PATRIOT Act allow the FBI secretly to access information about U.S. persons (U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents), including library, medical, education, internet, television, and financial records, without demonstrating any suspicion that the target is involved in espionage or terrorism. 106 Prior to the PATRIOT Act, the personal records of U.S. persons could only be accessed by the FBI if there were specific and articulable facts giving reason to believe that the person to whom the records pertain is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. 107 The PATRIOT Act dropped this requirement of individualized suspicion. 108 Moreover, section 215 requests are considered only by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which hears the government s requests ex parte in the absence of the target of the search and the target s counsel. Prior to the PATRIOT Act, the FISC could issue orders only for the records held by a common carrier, public accommodation facility, physical storage facility, or vehicle rental facility. 109 Bookstore, library, education, and medical records were not available through secret processes; any request for their production could be challenged in open court. The PATRIOT Act, however, expands the FISC s reach to requests for any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items), held by any business. 110 THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT The FISC was established as part of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The court was originally composed of seven federal judges, but the number was increased to eleven under the PATRIOT Act. The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court appoints judges to the FISC for staggered terms. Because the judges review the FBI s surveillance applications ex parte, only the government can appeal the FISC s decision to modify or deny an application. Appeals are heard by the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review, a secret court composed of three semi-retired federal judges. Section 505 requests are not subject to any judicial oversight. These National Security Letters (NSLs) authorize the FBI to order a telephone company or internet service provider to disclose the target s name, address, length of service, and local and long distance billing records. The FBI may also use NSLs to obtain financial records and information held by consumer credit reporting agencies (data highly prone to error). 111 With no judicial oversight, service providers are compelled to produce these records solely on the basis of a written declaration by the FBI director or his designee that the information is sought for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. 112 Once again, the FBI need no longer demonstrate suspicion that the individual targeted is involved in terrorism. Finally, both section 215 and section 505 orders impose a gag on the provider of the records, making it a crime to reveal that the FBI has seized or searched customer information. Thus, a librarian who speaks out about being forced to reveal a patron s book selections can be subject to prosecution. 113 Because of the secrecy surrounding these surveillance operations, little is known about how many U.S. persons have been subject to such intrusions. To understand the scope of these new powers, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) inquired in July 2002 whether section 215 of the PATRIOT Act had been used to access library, bookstore, or newspaper records and, if so, how many times. The Justice Department refused to answer, 17

40 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL saying that such information is classified. 114 In the meantime, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the ACLU on the implementation of the PATRIOT Act garnered 350 pages of heavily redacted material. 115 The FBI had issued enough NSLs to fill six blacked out pages. 116 (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders by the secret court, discussed below, filled another blacked-out page. 117 ) Many have been outspoken about the potential these new surveillance measures have to chill freedom of expression and inquiry. As one librarian put it, section 215 of the PATRIOT Act conflicts with our code of ethics because it forces librarians to let the FBI sweep up vast amounts of information about lots of people without any indication that they ve done anything wrong. 118 In June 2002, a coalition of librarians, booksellers, and others asked Congress to reinstate the pre-patriot system of subpoenas subject to judicial review as the method of obtaining these records. 119 Many of these groups also support a bill sponsored by Representative Bernard Sanders (I-VT) called the Freedom to Read Protection Act (FRPA) (H.R. 1157). The bill aims to raise judicial and congressional oversight of section 215 activity, and it would exempt bookstores and libraries from the new catch-all orders requiring the production of tangible things. 120 Law enforcement officials would still be able to obtain these records, but would have to get a subpoena to do so, subject to normal judicial scrutiny. 121 FRPA now has a bipartisan group of 133 cosponsors in the House. 122 Electronic Surveillance The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) 123 was passed in 1978 in an effort to constrain federal wiretapping authority following revelations of widespread abuse in the 1970s. 124 Rather than allowing the executive unfettered discretion to conduct such searches, FISA authorized counterintelligence agents to wiretap U.S. persons under specific circumstances for the sole purpose of pursuing foreign intelligence information. Subject to fewer restrictions than wiretap searches aimed at criminal targets, FISA orders allowed targets to be: surveilled for 90 days (or up to a year if the target is a foreign power ); 125 kept in the dark about the surveillance unless and until the FBI initiates a prosecution; 126 and deprived of the ability to see or challenge government affidavits against them whenever the attorney general maintained that disclosure would prejudice national security. 127 Most significant, whereas law enforcement officers conducting a criminal investigation had to convince a court that there was probable cause to suspect specific criminal activity to obtain a criminal wiretap warrant, 128 intelligence officials seeking a FISA order only needed to show the FISC that there was probable cause to believe that the target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, 129 and (if a U.S. person) was conducting activities which involve or may involve a violation of U.S. criminal law. 130 Accordingly, FISA orders were available only for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence information

41 PERSONAL PRIVACY THE ORIGINS OF FISA: THE 1976 CHURCH COMMITTEE REPORT FISA was one of the reform measures adopted in response to a 1976 report by the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee). 132 The report revealed that on the premise of national security, U.S. intelligence agencies had been carrying out illegal surveillance of domestic organizations, collecting vast amounts of information about the intimate details of citizens lives and about their participation in legal and peaceful political activities. 133 Although the targets of this surveillance were primarily antiwar protesters and civil rights activists (including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), they spanned a broad spectrum of groups, including the Women s Liberation Movement, the John Birch Society, and the American Christian Action Council. 134 The Church Committee determined that such abuses were an inevitable outgrowth of the executive branch s excessive power over intelligence activities, which, until then, had been largely exempted from the normal system of checks and balances. 135 This problem had its roots in the mid- 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt unilaterally authorized the FBI and other intelligence agencies to conduct domestic counterintelligence operations a practice that grew substantially during the Cold War and during the civil unrest of the 1960s and 1970s. In the latter period, secret surveillance techniques that had been used against suspected Communist agents began to be applied against a wide range of domestic groups advocating for peaceful societal change groups with no suspected connection to a foreign power. 136 The Church Committee warned that the system for controlling intelligence must be brought back within the constitutional scheme, 137 emphasizing that unless new and tighter controls are established by legislation, domestic intelligence activities threaten to undermine our democratic society and fundamentally alter its nature. 138 Because FISA made the standards for foreign intelligence wiretaps lower than those constitutionally required for ordinary domestic criminal investigations, courts and the Justice Department erected a filter (often mischaracterized as a wall ) between those conducting domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence operations. 139 The filter did not prevent intelligence officials from sharing FISA wiretap information about imminent criminal activity. Indeed, prior to the PATRIOT Act, the FBI provided monthly briefings to law enforcement on all counterintelligence investigations in which there were reasonable indications of significant federal crimes. 140 The filter simply required that raw FISA intercepts be screened so that only the information which might be relevant to criminal activity was passed on to prosecutors. 141 The Criminal Division of the Justice Department was explicitly permitted to give guidance to the FBI aimed at preserving the option of criminal prosecution, 142 but the filter ensured that the decision on when to share information obtained with counterintelligence methods resided with intelligence officials. Thus, law enforcement could not use the intelligence division to collect information for a criminal case which it would otherwise be barred from collecting due to insufficient evidence to support a search warrant within the criminal justice system. Section 218 of the PATRIOT Act altered the 1978 FISA. Whereas the 1978 Act limited FISA surveillance to use in investigations for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence, 143 section 218 expanded FISA surveillance to investigations in which the collection of foreign intelligence is merely a significant purpose of the surveillance. 144 Thus, as Attorney General 19

42 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL Ashcroft explained in guidelines implementing the new law, FISA can now be used primarily for a law enforcement purpose, so long as a significant foreign intelligence purpose remains. 145 At the same time, the attorney general replaced existing Justice Department procedures prohibiting the Criminal Division s directing or controlling the [FISA] investigation toward law enforcement objectives 146 with new procedures encouraging criminal prosecutors to advise FBI intelligence officials concerning the initiation, operation, continuation, or expansion of FISA searches and surveillance. 147 The filter no longer operates to prevent law enforcement officials from using FISA orders to avoid Fourth Amendment probable cause requirements. REQUIREMENTS FOR CRIMINAL AND INTELLIGENCE ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE TITLE III (CRIMINAL LAW) FISA BEFORE PATRIOT FISA AFTER PATRIOT Warrant issued in ordinary Order issued by secret FISC Order issued by secret FISC federal court Probable cause of specified crime Available in criminal investigations Initiated and directed by law enforcement Authorized for 30 days Notice within 90 days of termination Targets can pursue civil remedies for illegal wiretaps Probable cause that target is a foreign power or an agent thereof AND if U.S. person, involved in activities which involve or may involve a crime Available where collection of foreign intelligence is the purpose of the investigation Initiated and directed by intelligence. Law enforcement prohibited from directing or controlling the [FISA] investigation toward law enforcement objectives Authorized for 1 year against foreign powers, 90 days against their agents No notice unless and until prosecution initiated; no right to see application Targets have no remedy against illegal wiretaps Probable cause that target is a foreign power or an agent thereof AND if U.S. person, involved in activities which involve or may involve a crime Available primarily for a law enforcement purpose, so long as a significant foreign intelligence purpose remains Law enforcement may advise intelligence on the initiation, operation, continuation, or expansion of FISA searches and surveillance Authorized for 1 year against foreign powers, 90 days against their agents No notice unless and until prosecution initiated; no right to see application Targets have no remedy against illegal wiretaps 20

43 PERSONAL PRIVACY Secret Courts Disagree On the Extent of FISA As Amended If direction of counterintelligence cases involving the use of highly intrusive FISA surveillances and searches by criminal prosecutors is necessary to obtain and produce foreign intelligence information, it is yet to be explained to the Court. 148 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (2002) In March 2002, the new procedures authorizing prosecutors to direct FISA investigations came before the FISC. Although in its 25-year history the FISC has reportedly approved without modification all but five government applications, 149 the court roundly rejected the attorney general s new interpretation of the amended FISA and took the unprecedented step of publishing its decision. The FISC determined that allowing criminal prosecutors to direct the use of FISA surveillances is designed to enhance criminal investigation and prosecution instead of being consistent with the need to obtain, produce, and disseminate foreign intelligence information. 150 The executive appealed the decision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (Court of Review). Meeting for the first time in its 25-year history, the three-judge Court of Review overruled the FISC, holding that criminal prosecutors may direct FISA investigations. The only restriction on FISA powers imposed by the Court of Review is that the FISA process may not be used with the sole objective of criminal prosecution. 151 This standard is satisfied [s]o long as the government entertains a realistic option of dealing with the [suspected foreign agent] other than through criminal prosecution. 152 Again, the secrecy surrounding FISA surveillance makes oversight difficult. Since the unprecedented release of the FISC and Court of Review opinions, the FISC rulings have remained secret, as before. And people monitored under FISA do not find out that the court has approved the investigations unless and until they are prosecuted. Nonetheless, there are some preliminary indications of the extent to which FISA has been used. The FISC itself has complained that executive branch agents, including the FBI Director, have repeatedly misled the court in order to circumvent the filter between criminal and intelligence operations. 153 The FISC recalled a litany of misstatements and omissions of material facts in some 75 FISA applications related to major terrorist attacks directed against the United States. 154 Furthermore, government statistics show that between 2001 and 2002 the number of FISA orders increased by 31 percent while the number of ordinary criminal surveillance warrants dipped by 9 percent. 155 The number of FISA orders issued in 2002 is 21 percent greater than the largest number in the previous decade, and FISA orders now account for just over half of all federal wiretapping conducted. 156 The Justice Department has admitted that other provisions of the PATRIOT Act have been applied beyond the intended counterterrorism scope of the Act. For example, Sections 216, 220 and 319 have been exploited to track not only terrorist conspirators, but also at least one major drug distributor thieves who obtained victims bank account information and stole the money a fugitive who fled on the eve of trial a hacker who stole a company s trade secrets [and] a lawyer [who] had defrauded his clients

44 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL In addition, the number of emergency FISA orders issued has exploded in the past year. Under current law, so-called emergency surveillance may be conducted on the authorization of the attorney general for 72 hours before it must be reviewed and approved by the FISC. 158 This emergency procedure does not require the executive to establish probable cause or seek any prior judicial approval. 159 According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, the FBI has made full and very productive use of the emergency FISA process, including 170 emergency FISAs which is more than triple the total number employed in the prior 23-year history of the FISA statute. 160 Proposals for Further Expanding FISA In February 2003, the non-partisan government watchdog, the Center for Public Integrity, leaked a copy of proposed legislation drafted in secret by the Justice Department. The secret proposals were entitled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, dubbed PATRIOT II after the leak. 161 The draft act aimed to abolish three key protections from surveillance for U.S. persons by: (1) allowing foreign intelligence surveillance of individuals with no known links to any foreign government or to any group engaged in international terrorism, but suspected of plotting international terrorism individually; 162 (2) dropping the requirement that surveillance of a U.S. person may only be conducted if the individual is engaging in activities that involve or may involve some violation of law; 163 and (3) allowing the attorney general to authorize the imposition of wiretaps for up to 15 days without judicial review in the event of a congressional authorization of military force or an attack on the United States creating a national emergency (under current law, the attorney general has this 15-day power only after a congressional declaration of war). 164 The public outcry following the leak of PATRIOT II appears to have dampened White House support for the bill as a comprehensive package of proposals. 165 The Justice Department, however, has not stopped pushing for more powers. A new vehicle for this expansion has been circulating among members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is expected to be introduced in the fall of The draft bill, the Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations (VICTORY) Act, 167 contains provisions similar to PATRIOT II, allowing the attorney general to issue administrative subpoenas (which do not require judicial approval) in the course of domestic as well as international terrorism investigations. 168 These administrative subpoenas are issued at the discretion of the attorney general and require the production of any records or other things relevant to the investigation, including those held by providers of electronic communication services. 169 Such subpoenas are subject to fewer restrictions and less oversight than even NSLs, discussed above. NSLs may not be issued solely on the basis of First Amendment activities. 170 The FBI may disseminate information gained from an NSL only where it is clearly relevant to the statutory authority of the receiving agency. 171 And all NSL requests must be reported on a semi-annual basis to various Senate and House committees. 172 None of these restrictions applies to administrative subpoenas. 173 As discussed in Chapter 1, President Bush publicly requested that the Justice Department be given this new subpoena power in a speech at the FBI Academy on September 10, In addition, the VICTORY Act proposes to further insulate law enforcement from accountability for abuse of electronic surveillance, by prohibiting courts from suppressing evidence derived from a wiretap absent proof that law enforcement acted in bad faith

45 PERSONAL PRIVACY REQUIREMENTS FOR ACCESSING PERSONAL RECORDS PATRIOT 215 PATRIOT 505 (NSLS) DRAFT VICTORY ACT 503 (Administrative Subpoenas) Issued by FISC after ex parte hearing No judicial oversight; written declaration of FBI director or designee No judicial oversight; written declaration of attorney general Apply to any tangible things held by any business May not issue solely on the basis of First Amendment activities No restrictions on dissemination to other governmental agencies Semi-annual report on requests to House and Senate committees on the judiciary Apply to telephone, internet, financial institution and credit reporting records May not issue solely on the basis of First Amendment activities Information gathered may be disseminated only where it is clearly relevant to the statutory authority of the receiving agency Semi-annual report on requests to various House and Senate committees Apply to any records or other things relevant to the investigation No protection for First Amendment activities No restrictions on dissemination to other governmental agencies No reporting requirement KEEPING TABS ON DOMESTIC ACTIVITIES I get very, very queasy when federal law enforcement is effectively... going back to the bad old days when the FBI was spying on people like Martin Luther King. 175 Representative F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-WI) In May 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft unilaterally overturned regulations preventing FBI agents from monitoring domestic religious, political, and civic organizations without some suspicion of wrong-doing. 176 These protections had been adopted in 1976, in the wake of the Senate Church Committee s findings on the abuses of the FBI and other intelligence agencies engaged in domestic spying. Under the attorney general s new guidelines, FBI agents may attend public events such as political rallies and religious services, surf the internet, and mine commercial databases as part of a broad mission to prevent or detect terrorism. The Justice Department Inspector General has announced that he will be reviewing the implementation of the new guidelines, 177 but no information is available yet. In the meantime, domestic intelligence operations continue with little guidance as to how FBI agents decide when they are appropriate, and no mechanism for accountability or redress. 23

46 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL Airline Watchlists The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001, 178 and charged with overseeing the security of all modes of transportation. The TSA s current system for preventing terrorist access to airplanes relies on airline watchlists compiled from a variety of government sources. At least two types of watchlist are maintained: a no-fly list of terrorist suspects, and a selectee list targeting people who must be subjected to rigorous screening before they are allowed to fly. 179 The TSA has refused to supply details of who is on the lists and why. However, according to TSA documents obtained through a FOIA suit filed by the ACLU, the list of targeted people has been growing daily in response to requests from the intelligence community, DHS, and other agencies. 180 To comply with the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, 181 TSA also continues to develop a new passenger screening system called the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System II (CAPPS II). 182 CAPPS II will eventually replace the current program (CAPPS I), while retaining the same primary mission of ensur[ing] passenger and aviation security. TSA initially indicated that CAPPS II would be used only to identify individuals (including U.S. citizens) with potential ties to international terrorist organizations. In an Interim Privacy Notice issued on July 22, 2003, however, TSA made clear that CAPPS II s reach would be expanded to identify: (1) individuals with possible ties to domestic terrorism; (2) individuals with outstanding federal or state arrest warrants for violent crimes; and potentially (3) visa and immigration law violators. 183 THE STORY OF SISTER VIRGINE LAWINGER On April 19, 2002, I was supposed to fly from Milwaukee to D.C. for a weekend of peace-activism opposing military aid to Columbia and the infamous School of the Americas, a U.S. training camp for foreign militias in Ft. Benning, Georgia. Twenty of my group of 37 were refused boarding passes, questioned, and delayed for so long that we missed the plane. We were finally allowed to fly the next day, but we missed an entire day of our activities. Many of the group were high school and college students getting their first experience of participation in the democratic process. Instead they learned how easily the civil rights they take for granted can be usurped. I wanted to know why 20 peace activists including nuns and high-school students would be flagged as potential threats to airline security, so I started what turned out to be a really long process of getting information from the government via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). After months of dialogue with many different agencies, the TSA acknowledged that a file existed, but refused to release it on the grounds that it had been exempted from FOIA. The ACLU appealed this decision and finally got hold of the document with all the pertinent information blacked out. After all this time and effort, I still can t find out why I was flagged or whether and how I ended up on a terrorist watch-list. Sister Virgine Lawinger, Dominican nun (as told to the Lawyers Committee) 24

47 PERSONAL PRIVACY THE STORY OF RETIRED COAST GUARD OFFICER LARRY MUSARRA On July 31, 2002 my wife and I were taking our son by plane to attend a special needs school. Unfortunately, we weren t able to check in on the Instant Ticket Machine and when the supervisor couldn t fix the problem, they told us I m sorry Mr. Musarra but you are on an FBI watch list. I reminded them that I was a retired Coast Guard Officer, who had flown in and out of the Juneau Airport for seven years. We were finally allowed on the flight after extensive screening but no-one could explain why I would be on an FBI Watch List. In the next year we made 10 round trip flights to visit our son and we endured the same problems every time: web check-in denied; e-ticket check-in denied; hour-long waits for boarding passes; special screening. The entire Juneau High School wrestling team was held up by extra screening on each of the seven occasions that they traveled with my middle son during that period. My eldest son nearly missed flights home from college on two occasions. It was very inconvenient to fly, our trips took longer to check in, and we lost the bonus miles Alaska Airlines was offering for web check-in. When reporters started investigating my story the TSA blamed the airline, Alaska Airlines blamed TSA, and the FBI implied that maybe I was a terrorist. The TSA even told one reporter that her article was helping the other side! After rampant finger-pointing, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal finally got to the bottom of the story. Alaska Airlines was using an outdated name matching system that was developed decades ago for totally different purposes. I even received all my web check-in miles after another article that was printed in our local paper. The irony of the situation is that during this period, the TSA, which already employs a few of my fellow retired Coasties, offered me a job! Larry Musarra (as told to the Lawyers Committee) As envisaged, CAPPS II would assign a security risk rating to every air traveler based on information from commercial data providers (such as the credit header information name, address, telephone held by companies affiliated to credit agencies), as well as from government intelligence. CAPPS II is intended to avoid the kind of miscommunication and improper identification that has, on occasion, occurred under the systems currently in use. 184 However, the new system will not only rely on the same intelligence information making up the watchlists, but will also be vulnerable to error introduced by reliance on commercial databases. 185 The first public information on the proposed new system generated enormous public concern. 186 TSA subsequently reached out to privacy organizations, industry groups and others to discuss the system, and DHS Secretary Tom Ridge suspended development of CAPPS II pending assessment of its privacy implications by the newly appointed DHS Chief Privacy Officer, Nuala O Connor Kelly. 187 Based in part on these recommendations, a revised public notice was published on August 1, 2003 (the Interim Notice). 188 As set forth therein, CAPPS II will first seek to verify identity by checking name, address, telephone number, and date of birth against the credit header information name, address, telephone held by companies affiliated with 25

48 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL credit agencies. Passenger details will be transmitted to the commercial entity, which will return an authentication score reflecting the accuracy of the match between the data it holds and the data sent by TSA. CAPPS II will then generate a numerical risk score, setting the level of screening to which a passenger must be subjected. The score is calculated by checking the commercial identity information against records obtained from other government agencies, including intelligence information, watch lists, and other data. The Interim Notice states that DHS is currently developing a robust review and appeals process, to include the DHS privacy office. Despite such promises, many remain concerned both about the high likelihood of error, and the inadequate mechanisms for challenging the system. For example, the algorithms used by credit reporting agencies to generate credit header information ignore minor differences that occur in identifiers, such as incorrect digits in a social security number, leading to the erroneous combination of information from different individuals into one file. 189 Further errors may be introduced by credit bureau reliance on information from public records that often lack unique identifiable information. 190 As the Electronic Privacy Information Center observed in Senate testimony, [v]ictims of mixed files find it extremely difficult to correct this problem. 191 The broad category of domestic terrorist organizations also raises fears that those involved in peaceful protest or other groups will continue to be identified as potential security risks. 192 And while the Interim Notice provides that passengers can request a copy of most information contained about them in the system from the CAPPS II passenger advocate, it also states that passengers may access and contest only the data that they provided to the system. CAPPS II would remain exempt from existing legislation that requires agencies to provide individuals with access to government records and the opportunity to correct them. 193 Compared to the access mechanism that would otherwise be provided for by statute, the CAPPS II proposal offers no opportunity for judicial review of any TSA decision to deny access to particular records. 194 Furthermore, TSA has proposed that CAPPS II be exempted from a standard Privacy Act requirement that an agency maintain only such information about a person as is necessary to accomplish an authorized agency purpose. 195 Terrorism Information Awareness The most pressing threat to liberty is a compulsory database encompassing everyone... like the TIA that would permit real-time monitoring of our whereabouts, movements and transactions. This is a Big Brother scenario, one of constant surveillance or harassment of citizens unrelated to addressing terrorist threats. You can t opt out. 196 Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr., Director of Technology Studies, Cato Institute In 2002, the Defense Department announced the development of the Total Information Awareness project (TIA). As envisaged by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), TIA would deploy government software to search a broad range of domestic and foreign, public and private commercial databases, searching for patterns that are related to predicted terrorist activities. 197 TIA was intended to enable the government to search personal data, including: religious and political contributions; driving records; high school transcripts; 26

49 PERSONAL PRIVACY book purchases; medical records; passport applications; car rentals; phone, , and internet search logs. These searches would not be confined to information regarding individuals with links to terrorist organizations, would not require prior judicial approval, and would not be subject to legal challenge by those whose data are searched. The development of TIA began without public notice, a single congressional hearing, or a plan for oversight and accountability mechanisms. As the controversy surrounding TIA grew, information about the program started to disappear from the official TIA website. 198 Biographical information about the TIA development team appeared and then was removed from DARPA s Information Awareness Office website in November 2002; the TIA logo, a globe topped by an all-seeing eye on a pyramid with the slogan, Knowledge is Power, was removed from the site; diagrams describing how TIA was to operate have been replaced by less detailed versions. In April 2003, DARPA renamed the project Terrorism Information Awareness, and in August the program s controversial director Admiral John Poindexter resigned from his position, after his promotion of a project for predicting terrorist attacks with an online futures market. 199 Although DARPA s original information to contractors stated that the amounts of data that will need to be stored and accessed will be unprecedented, measured in petabytes, 200 DARPA later told Congress that the TIA program is not attempting to create or access a centralized database that will store information gathered from various publicly or privately held databases TIA would leave the underlying data where it is. 201 Members of Congress and non-governmental organizations from across the political spectrum expressed grave concerns about the privacy implications of the program, 202 and also its efficacy and cost. DARPA itself acknowledged that TIA may raise significant and novel privacy and civil liberties policy issues. 203 The Association for Computing Machinery s U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM), representing 70,000 information technology professionals, expressed significant doubts that TIA could achieve its stated goal of prevention. Instead, according to USACM, TIA would provide new targets for exploitation and attack by malicious computer users, criminals, and terrorists, increase the risk of identity theft, and provide new opportunities for harassment or blackmail by individuals who have inappropriately obtained access to an individual s information. 204 DARPA s promise to develop algorithms that prevent unauthorized access and provide an immutable audit capability so investigators and analysts cannot misuse private data without being identified as the culprits, 205 is unlikely to allay expert fears, since both prevention of unauthorized access and creation of audit trails are challenging research problems in themselves. Indeed, it is unlikely that sufficiently robust databases of the required size and complexity, whether centralized or distributed, can be constructed, financed, and effectively employed in a secure environment, even with significant research advances. 206 Intelligence officials have also expressed doubts about TIA s effectiveness. Maureen Baginski, FBI executive assistant director for intelligence, and Alan Wade, CIA chief information officer, described the project as unbounded and said that [t]he scope may be too big. 207 USACM has said that even an optimistic estimate of likely false positives incorrectly 27

50 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL labeling someone as a potential terrorist could result in as many as 3 million citizens being wrongly identified each year. 208 The experience with errors in airline watchlists, detailed above, lends weight to USACM s fears. Nonetheless, DARPA has disclaimed responsibility for inaccuracies in the commercial databases on which TIA would rely. It said that TIA [is] simply a tool for more efficiently inquiring about data in the hands of others. [C]oncerns about the quality and accuracy of databases that are in private hands would exist regardless of the method chosen to query these databases and, thus, do not present a concern specific to TIA. 209 To its credit, Congress has taken public concern, expert warnings, and the deficiencies of DARPA s report seriously, and has begun to move to rein in TIA. On July 14, 2003, the Senate adopted a provision eliminating funding for TIA research and development, and requiring specific congressional authorization for the deployment, implementation, or interdepartmental transfer of any component of the TIA program. 210 The House also adopted a provision requiring congressional authorization for TIA activities affecting U.S. citizens, but it did not cut off funding. 211 The White House has announced its disapproval of these moves, urg[ing] the Senate to remove the provision. 212 Despite the assertion of congressional oversight, TIA is still very much part of the executive s efforts. Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) Although Congress has taken steps to prevent deployment of TIA without congressional authorization, a new initiative with a much lower profile, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), has the potential to achieve the same invasions of privacy without transgressing those new legislative restrictions. The TTIC initiative was announced by the White House on January 28, 2003, and has been described as a multi-agency joint venture that integrates and analyzes terrorist-threat related information, collected domestically or abroad, and disseminates information and analysis to appropriate recipients. 213 TTIC s mission is to serve as the central hub to provide and receive [counterterrorism] information. 214 In order to achieve this goal, TTIC has the extraordinary power to task elements of all the federal intelligence and security agencies (including DHS, FBI, CIA, and the Defense Department) with the collection of information for analysis by TTIC. 215 As TTIC s director has stated: [A]nalysts assigned from the other TTIC partner organizations [Justice Department, FBI, DHS, Defense Department, State Department, and CIA] have exceptionally broad access to intelligence. Within TTIC, there is desktop access to all partner agency networks result[ing] in unprecedented sharing of information critical to federal, state, local, and law enforcement entities. 216 Thus far, the executive has provided few details about the type of information that TTIC will task, receive, and analyze. This worries privacy advocates such as Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who fears that TTIC may be an attempt to duck all those [TIA-related] questions and go ahead with programs that don t have any connection to Poindexter and get away from the swamp that TIA is in. 217 Indeed, TTIC Director John Brennan has expressed enthusiasm for the TIA program and confidence in its privacy protections. 218 According to Mr. Brennan, discussions are already underway between TTIC and DARPA about making parts of 28

51 PERSONAL PRIVACY the TIA program work for TTIC. 219 Tien s concerns are shared by David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who observed that TTIC is potentially a huge repository of information concerning American citizens. There s nothing in what has been made publicly available that would contain a limitation on such collection. 220 TTIC will [h]ave unfettered access to all intelligence information from raw reports to finished analytic assessments available to the U.S. government, 221 and will be able to reach back to its participating parent agencies base resources as necessary to meet its extraordinary requirements. 222 This means that TTIC will integrate information from the federal, state and local level as well as the private sector. 223 TTIC raises further privacy concerns because it has been placed under the control of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). 224 The DCI serves as the head of CIA and of the aggregate U.S. intelligence services. Although TTIC is not part of CIA, 225 placing TTIC, and its ability to command collection of information by other agencies, under the control of the DCI may make available to CIA the police, subpoena, or law enforcement powers or internal security functions that are statutorily forbidden to it under the National Security Act. 226 Further, while TTIC is under the control of the DCI rather than DHS, its authority will not be subject to the crucial oversight provisions of the Homeland Security Act of The Homeland Security Act assigned the task of coordinating and analyzing terrorism-threat information to DHS, 227 which is subject to numerous statutory oversight procedures not applicable to TTIC. If TTIC were housed within DHS, TTIC s authority would be limited by DHS statutory charter, and TTIC s power would be constrained by congressional budgetary control, as well as by DHS civil rights and privacy officers. 228 As structured, TTIC is subject to no such restraints. TTIC, in short, seems to assume duties that Congress explicitly allotted to DHS, without adopting the oversight controls that Congress provided for DHS. RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Congress should repeal section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to restore safeguards against abuse of the seizure of business records, including records from libraries, bookstores, and educational institutions, where the danger of chilling free expression is greatest. Congress should also amend section 505 of the PATRIOT Act to require the FBI to obtain judicial authorization before it may obtain information from telephone companies, internet service providers, or credit reporting agencies. 2. Congress should review changes to FBI guidelines that relax restrictions on surveillance of domestic religious and political organizations to ensure that there are adequate checks on executive authority in the domestic surveillance arena. The guidelines should be specifically amended to better protect against the use of counterterrorism surveillance tools for purely criminal investigations. 3. Congress should delay implementation of the Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre- Screening System II pending an independent expert assessment of the system s feasibility, potential impact on personal privacy, and mechanisms for error correction. Separately, Congress should immediately eliminate all funding for Total [or Terrorism] Information Awareness research and development. 29

52 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL 4. The Terrorist Threat Integration Center should be housed within DHS where it may be subject to oversight by departmental and congressional officials who can investigate possible abuses of civil rights and civil liberties. 5. Congress should establish a senior position responsible for civil rights and civil liberties matters within the DHS Office of the Inspector General. This position would report directly to the Inspector General, and be charged with coordinating and investigating civil rights and civil liberties matters in DHS. 30

53 CHAPTER THREE IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES, AND MINORITIES INTRODUCTION Two years after September 11, a number of the most controversial initiatives that the executive branch directed against certain categories of non-citizens in the aftermath of the attacks have ended, or at least subsided. The mass round-ups of predominantly Arab and Muslim immigrants that occurred in the weeks and months following September 11 have ended, although immigration laws are still being enforced disproportionately against those communities. The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have indicated that they will take steps to help ensure that the egregious mistakes made during these round-ups do not happen again. The Justice Department s temporary call-in registration program a source of fear and confusion for non-citizens from the 25 predominantly Arab and Muslim nations targeted by the program officially concluded in April The series of voluntary interviews initially conducted by the Justice Department of nationals from predominantly Arab and Muslim nations (and then of Iraqi-born individuals this past spring) do not appear to be currently occurring. Despite these important recent changes, the nationality-based information and detention sweeps of the past two years have taken a serious toll on immigrant communities in the United States. Arab and Muslim organizations describe the chilling effect that these programs have had on community relations, relating feelings of anxiety, isolation, and ostracism even among longtime, lawful permanent residents of the United States. From a security standpoint, these blanket immigration measures have alienated the very communities whose intelligence and cooperation is needed most. As one visiting Pakistani scholar put it: A worse way of [improving security] could hardly be imagined. Not only is it likely to fail in securing the homeland, it is creating more resentment against the United States. Does America need a policy that fails to differentiate between friend and foe? 229 At the same time, the administration continues to direct a set of ongoing initiatives that threaten to exacerbate this already troubling status quo. Foremost among these, the Justice Department is aggressively pursuing efforts to involve local police in the enforcement of federal immigration law. Local officials have cautioned that these efforts will overburden already scarce front-line resources and undermine already fragile community relations. As one police chief put it: To get into the enforcement of immigration laws would build wedges and walls that have taken a long time to break down. 230 Separately, refugee resettlement levels, which plummeted following the September 11 attacks, have yet to rebound due to a range of failures from funding shortfalls to ongoing mismanagement. And a recent Attorney General decision on Haitian refugees has raised concerns of a new national security exception to the procedures by which detained asylum seekers and other immigrants can seek release. In short, the new normal in immigration has left much repair work to be done. 31

54 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL LEGAL BACKGROUND Walt Whitman s description of the United States as a teeming nation of nations remains apt. 231 The overwhelming majority of Americans are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Indeed, for the first hundred years of its history, immigrants were at the forefront of building and settling a vast and undeveloped continent, and the United States absorbed almost everyone who arrived on its shores. 232 But the United States has two distinct, often conflicting histories of immigration. These two histories one of welcoming new immigrants and the other of xenophobia and restrictiveness have competed with each other from the early days of the republic. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 a reaction to the social upheavals of the French Revolution gave the president the authority to deport any non-citizen he considered dangerous to the welfare of the nation. 233 Opposition to these statutes helped propel Thomas Jefferson to the presidency two years later. The 1850s witnessed the rise of the Know Nothing Party which sought to halt the immigration of Catholics and to deny naturalized citizens the vote. 234 But the nation ultimately rejected the Know Nothings, and the party was disbanded. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Congress passed a string of selective exclusion laws, directed primarily at a new wave of immigrants from Asia and from Southern and Eastern Europe. 235 It was in a challenge to an 1888 statute refusing entrance to Chinese immigrants that the U.S. Supreme Court adopted the view that Congress had plenary power over immigration matters upholding Congress selective policies of exclusion. 236 Four years later, the United States opened an immigration station at Ellis Island within view of the Statue of Liberty. Over the next twenty years, millions of new immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island. 237 Viewed against these conflicting histories, it is clearly during periods of war or national emergency that immigrants and non-citizens have been most vulnerable to high-profile federal crackdowns. During the red scare just after World War I, for example, then-u.s. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer responded to a set of bombings in eight U.S. cities by launching a series of raids against suspected Communists, detaining thousands of non-citizens without charge, and interrogating them without counsel. 238 He claimed these were foreign agents who had come to America disguised as immigrants in order to overthrow the U.S. government. 239 Twenty years later, in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt approved a military order mandating the forced removal and detention of Japanese immigrants and U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry from numerous communities along the Pacific Coast. 240 Between 1942 and 1946, more than 100,000 people were held in relocation camps. 241 Both the Palmer raids and the World War II internment camps have since earned universal reprobation and indeed, the U.S. government has formally apologized and granted reparations to the surviving victims of the World War II internment camps. 242 Nonetheless, these actions were widely supported at the time they were implemented. Under U.S. law, as in the law of most nations, non-citizens are still not entitled to enjoy all the advantages of citizenship, and a long list of statutes excludes them from many of the protections and benefits available to citizens. 243 But the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear repeatedly that the U.S. Constitution protects citizens and non-citizens alike from deprivations of 32

55 IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND MINORITIES life, liberty, or property without due process of law. As the Court has explained: [T]he Due Process Clause applies to all persons within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent. 244 The first international human rights standards protecting non-citizens emerged in the immediate aftermath of World War II with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, followed by norms to protect those seeking refuge from persecution in their own countries. The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol prohibit governments from returning a non-citizen to a country in which his or her life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. 245 In 1980, Congress incorporated provisions of the 1951 UN Convention and its 1967 Protocol into domestic law. The 1980 Refugee Act embraced the Convention s language concerning the obligation of states to protect refugees and reiterated the Convention s prohibition against returning non-citizens to persecution. 246 The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by the United States in 1992, provides that: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. 247 Article 9(4) of the ICCPR provides that: Anyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that the court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful. 248 This provision applies to all detainees, including immigration detainees. 249 The UN Human Rights Committee, in its decision in Torres v. Finland, has explained that Article 9(4) of the ICCPR envisages that the legality of detention will be determined by a court so as to ensure a higher degree of objectivity and independence. 250 ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF POLICIES PAST A number of the policies that have been the source of greatest concern in the two years since September 11 have ended. The Justice Department Office of the Inspector General (OIG) having issued a report strongly critical of the Department s treatment of those detained in the round-ups immediately following the attacks released a supplemental report on September 8, 2003, noting that DHS and the Justice Department are taking steps to address many of the concerns identified. And based on scores of interviews conducted by the Lawyers Committee with immigration practitioners, it appears that detainees are no longer generally being held for extended periods without charge as they were in the months following September Despite this, two important concerns remain. First, the policies described in the following pages appear to have caused lasting damage to the relationship between immigrant communities and the U.S. government. Second, the expansive new custody and detention regulations adopted in the wake of September 11 the regulations that led to the abuses the OIG has described remain on the books. Until these are removed, there is little to prevent such abuses from occurring again. 33

56 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL The September 11 Detainees Neither the fact that the department was operating under unprecedented trying conditions, nor the fact that 9/11 detainees were in our country illegally, justifies entirely the way in which some of the detainees were treated. 252 Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) More than 1,200 people were detained in the two months following the September 11 attacks. 253 The Justice Department classified 762 of them as September 11 detainees, defined as those detained on immigration violations purportedly in connection with the investigation of the attacks. 254 A 198-page report issued by the OIG in June 2003 makes clear, however, that many of the detainees did not receive core due process protections, and the decision to detain them was at times extremely attenuated from the focus of the September 11 investigation. 255 The OIG s finding that the vast majority of the detainees were accused not of terrorism-related offenses, but of civil violations of federal immigration law, 256 calls into serious question a recent decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upholding the Justice Department s decision to withhold the names of the September 11 detainees. The court s opinion relied explicitly on its conclusion that many of the detainees had links to terrorism, and therefore that public access to any of their names could interfere with the government s ongoing efforts to fight terrorism. 257 The OIG s conclusion that the designation of the detainees as of interest to the September 11 investigation was made in an indiscriminate and haphazard manner, catching many aliens who had no connection to terrorism in their net, 258 seriously undermines the basis of the court of appeals holding. Beyond this, the September 11 detainees were subject to a set of Justice Department policies that resulted in serious violations of their due process rights. First, the Justice Department implemented a hold until cleared policy a policy under which all non-citizens in whom the FBI had an interest required clearance by the FBI of any connection to terrorism before they could be released. 259 The Inspector General concluded that the clearance process was not conducted in a timely manner: it was understaffed and was not accorded sufficient priority. 260 The OIG reported that the average time from arrest to clearance was 80 days and less than 3 percent of the detainees were cleared within 3 weeks of arrest. 261 Second, the Justice Department issued a regulation that increased from 24 to 48 hours the time that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) could detain someone in custody without charge. 262 Detention without charge could continue beyond this for a reasonable period of time in the event of an emergency or other extraordinary circumstance. 263 The terms reasonable period of time, emergency and extraordinary circumstance were not defined. The expanded authority applied even to detainees who were not charged with a crime or suspected of presenting a risk to the community. With the new regulations in place, many detainees did not receive notice of the charges against them for weeks, and some for more than a month after being arrested. 264 Consistent with early data, 265 the OIG reports that 192 detainees waited longer than 72 hours to be served with charges; 24 were held between days before being served; 24 were held more than 31 days before being served; and five were held an 34

57 IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND MINORITIES average of 168 days before being served. 266 Further, because INS did not record when a charging decision was made, the OIG concluded that it was impossible to determine how often the INS took advantage of the reasonable time exception to the charging rule. 267 Third, the lack of timely notice of the charges against them undermined the detainees ability to obtain legal representation, to request bond, and to understand why they were being detained. 268 In addition, the Inspector General found that detainees had been prevented from contacting lawyers during a communications blackout at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York, and detainees families and attorneys were unable to receive any information about them, including where they were held. 269 In some cases, attorneys were told that their clients were not detained at MDC when in fact they were. According to the OIG report, the first legal call made by any September 11 detainee held at MDC was not until October 15, This blackout, in conjunction with access-to-counsel problems created by the charging delays and restrictive legal access policies like that at MDC, seriously impaired detainees ability to obtain counsel s advice precisely when they needed it most. LIFE AT THE BROOKLYN METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER Conditions of confinement at MDC were often harsh for the September 11 detainees. Their cells were illuminated 24 hours a day; they wore hand-cuffs, leg irons, and heavy chains during non-contact visits with family and attorneys; and they were subject to 23-hour lock-down a period of strict confinement to their cells. The OIG report identifies a pattern of physical and verbal abuse by some correctional officers at the MDC against some September 11 detainees, particularly during the first months after the attacks. 271 The physical abuse reports included the use of painfully tight handcuffs and allegations that MDC staff slammed detainees against the wall. Some detainees reported slurs and verbal abuse such as Bin Laden Junior and you re going to die here, 272 as well as being told by MDC staff to shut up while they were praying. 273 In addition, MDC Bureau of Prisons officials adopted a practice of permitting September 11 detainees no more than one phone call a week to any outside counsel. Based on examination of a sample of 19 detainees held at MDC, the Inspector General concluded that, at best, detainees were offered far less than one legal call per week. 274 The weekly call was considered made in some cases when the detainee reached only voic , a busy signal, or a wrong number. 275 The OIG report criticizes the practice as unduly restrictive and inappropriate. 276 Fourth, the INS adopted a policy of denying bond in all cases related to the September 11 investigation. 277 And INS attorneys were given unilateral authority to affect an automatic stay of any bond-release ruling an immigration judge might issue. 278 The no bond policy immediately created an ethical dilemma for INS attorneys. As the INS Deputy General Counsel explained in a June 2002 memorandum, [i]t was and continues to be a rare occasion when there is any evidence available for use in the immigration court to sustain a no bond determination. 279 INS attorneys were thus placed in the position of arguing to immigration judges that individual detainees should not be released on bond even when there was no information to support such a position. 280 Many INS attorneys addressed this dilemma by first seeking continuances of bond hearings. As early as October 2001 and as late as June 2002, INS attorneys, including the INS General Counsel, raised concerns with INS headquarters and with Justice Department officials about the lack of evidence justifying opposition of bond, and the lengthy delays in obtaining clearance for detainees from the FBI. 281 The OIG concluded that the 35

58 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL Justice Department should have reevaluated its decision to deny bond in all cases as the Justice Department learned more about these detainees, particularly the many detainees who were not tied to terrorism. 282 The automatic stay authority was routinely invoked by government immigration attorneys to prevent the release of September 11 detainees in cases where an immigration judge had concluded that the detainee should be released from detention on bond. 283 Government attorneys also used the threat of the automatic stay power to discourage immigration attorneys from requesting immigration judge bond hearings for their clients explaining that if an immigration judge were to rule in favor of releasing the detainee on bond, the government immigration attorney would simply invoke the automatic stay. The detainee s release would then be further delayed while the bond decision awaited review on appeal. 284 On September 8, 2003, the OIG released a new report analyzing the written responses of the Justice Department and DHS to its June 2003 recommendations. The OIG made clear that both agencies are taking the recommendations seriously and are taking steps to address many of the concerns identified. 285 DHS has implemented two of the recommendations, and both agencies have agreed in principle with most of the remaining 19. But the OIG also made clear that significant work remained before its remaining recommendations would be fully implemented. With regard to its recommendation on the service of charges on immigrants, for example, the OIG emphasized the serious deficiencies outlined by its June 2003 report and asked for a copy of the agency s new charging requirements by October 3, The OIG also requested further, more specific responses to the other recommendations by October 3, 2003, and reiterated the two recommendations that had been rejected as unnecessary by the Justice Department in its written responses. These two recommendations called on the Justice Department to set up formal internal processes for reevaluating policies and resolving legal concerns during times of crisis. While the steps taken by the Justice Department and DHS are welcome, there remains cause to be concerned that the broad new custody policies under which these detentions were effected are still on the books. Indeed, wholly independent of the September 11 detainees, INS and DHS have already used the automatic stay power to prevent the release of Haitian asylum seekers who arrived by boat in Florida in October 2002, even in cases where immigration judges had ruled that the asylum seekers were entitled to release on bond. 286 And the Lawyers Committee has learned through interviews with immigration practitioners that the new stay power is still used on occasion by DHS immigration attorneys in order to discourage immigrants attorneys from requesting a bond hearing for their clients. 287 Such ongoing use is an unsurprising effect of the availability of these new powers. But they make it all the more essential that the regulations be repealed. 36

59 IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND MINORITIES Special Registration The pure accumulation of massive amounts of data is not necessarily helpful, especially for an agency like the INS that already has problems keeping track of things. Basically, what this has become is an immigration sweep. The idea that this has anything to do with security, or is something the government can do to stop terrorism, is absurd. 288 Juliette Kayyem, former member of the National Commission on Terrorism and counterterrorism expert at Harvard s John F. Kennedy School of Government On June 6, 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft announced the introduction of the National Security Exit-Entry Registration System (NSEERS) popularly known as special registration. 290 As part of this initiative, the Attorney General instituted a temporary call-in registration program that applied to males age 16 to age 45 from 25 predominantly Arab and Muslim countries who were residing in the United States on temporary visas. These individuals were required to report to INS offices during four specified phases to be fingerprinted, photographed, and questioned under oath by INS officers. 291 Failure to comply with special registration was made a deportable offense. 292 REPERCUSSIONS OF INS BACKLOGS During special registration, INS and DHS representatives Call-in registration officially put many men and boys into deportation proceedings ended on April 25, But the even when they had previously filed applications for failures of the call-in registration immigration status which were still pending due to INS program are now clear. First, the INS did not effectively distribute delays and backlogs. One eighteen-year-old high school student only avoided deportation after congressional information about the program intervention. A varsity basketball point guard at Jamaica requirements to affected High School in Queens, New York, Mohammad Sarfaraz communities, instead announcing the program only through publication in Hussain was placed in removal proceedings when he tried to fulfill his call-in registration requirement. At the time, the Federal Register, and later on the Hussain, who has four U.S. citizen siblings, already had a INS website. 293 Misinformation green card application pending which had been filed with about the program, including the INS in April 2001, more than a year earlier. Hussain had come to the United States from Pakistan when he was inaccurate, unclear and conflicting eight years old, traveling with his mother who had come notices distributed by the INS, led for cancer treatment. Hussain s mother died shortly after some men to unintentionally violate the program s requirements. 294 they arrived, and his father also passed away. It was only On after the intervention of Representative Gary L. Ackerman several occasions flight attendants or (D-NY) that DHS agreed to stop pursuing Hussain s travel agents gave registrants deportation. 289 inaccurate information about departure rules, which required those subject to call-in registration to notify the INS before leaving the United States if they ever wanted to return. 295 Bill Strassberger, a spokesperson for the DHS Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, acknowledged that [t]here have been problems in some locations and that the Department 37

60 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL need[ed] to look into them. Ultimately, the inadequate information and confusion caused many men to be unnecessarily deported or barred from return. 296 The story of Shahid Mahmood, a 38-year-old Pakistani doctor, provides a characteristic example. He was initially barred from returning to the United States and the elderly and needy patients he served in Roxboro, North Carolina because of the special registration program. Dr. Mahmood left the United States to visit his sick father in Lahore, Pakistan. He had previously registered under the call-in registration program at the Charlotte immigration office, but was unaware that he had to subsequently register at the airport if he intended to return to the United States. His travel agent had mistakenly confirmed that all he needed to do was to leave from one of the airports designated under the special registration program. Dr. Mahmood was only allowed to return to the United States after Senator Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Senator John Edwards (D-NC), and Representative David Price (D-NC) intervened by writing letters to the U.S. embassy in Pakistan urging that the bar against Dr. Mahmood s return be lifted. 297 Call-in registration was also marked by harsh uses of detention. According to DHS officials, 82,000 men complied with the call-in registration requirement. 298 As of March 18, 2003, the program had resulted in the detention of 1,854 people. 299 In Los Angeles, for example, about 400 men and boys were detained during the first phase of call-in registration. 300 Some were handcuffed and had their legs put in shackles; others were hosed down with cold water, or forced to sleep standing up because of overcrowding. 301 Attorneys reported that they were denied access to their clients during portions of the call-in registration interviews, and some of the registrants inadvertently waived their right to a removal hearing. 302 Both human rights and security experts expressed deep concerns about the effect of such registration policies. Citing the special call-ins of Jews in Europe during the Holocaust era and expressing concern for programs that appear to target groups of migrants based on their ethnic or religious heritage, the Board of Directors of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society recommended a temporary suspension of the call-in program until a congressional review of the program could be conducted. 303 In a January 9, 2003 letter to President Bush, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and other Jewish organizations expressed their concern that the implementation of the registration procedure appeared to have resulted in mistreatment and violations of the rights of many of those required to undergo registration, including detentions without particularized suspicion that the registrants were flight risks. 304 Emira Habiby Browne, executive director of the Arab-American Family Support Center echoed the sentiment: Families who came to the United States to realize the American dream who chose to abide by the law and to cooperate with the immigration authorities, have been singled out on the basis of their ethnicity and religion. 305 At the same time, security experts have found special registration to be ineffective. As Vincent Cannistraro, a former Director of Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council under President Reagan put it: [W]hen we alienate the communities, particularly immigrant communities, we undermine the very basis of our intelligence collection abilities because we need to have the trust and cooperation of people in those communities. If someone 38

61 IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND MINORITIES comes from the outside who is a stranger, comes into that community, the people who are long established in that community know it or are in a position to know it, and therefore to provide early warning information. But if the FBI conducts sensitive interviews with community leaders at the same time that that community has been rounded up by the INS, forced to report, and everyone who reports knows that if they are illegal, they are not a document holder, that they can and will be deported, you ve really kind of eliminated the ability to get information that you really need. 306 In the end, more than 13,000 of the men and boys who registered were found to be living illegally in the United States (often only because a pending application for adjustment of status was delayed due to INS backlogs) and were placed into deportation proceedings. 307 Some have already been deported. 308 The Justice Department claims that special registration resulted in the apprehension of 11 suspected terrorists, but DHS officials have reported that none of the men or boys who registered has been charged with any terrorist activity. 309 CHANGING COMMUNITIES In Atlantic County, New Jersey, the Pakistani population has fallen to 1,000, from approximately 2, In a Pakistani neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, business is down in some stores by 40 percent; a local newspaper sells 60 percent fewer ads; and the mosque that used to be overcrowded for Friday prayers is one-third empty. 311 Pakistani government officials estimate that 15,000 Pakistani residents of that Brooklyn neighborhood and the immediately surrounding area have left the United States to move to Canada, Europe, or back to Pakistan. 312 Indeed, the exodus of Pakistani immigrants has reportedly stimulated a housing boom in Islamabad. 313 A comprehensive report prepared by the Migration Policy Institute explains the root of these fears: Many have left countries that are governed by dictatorships, where the rule of law and the accountability of government are scare commodities. It is a mindset used to tales of disappearances and to government secrecy. 314 Osama Siblani, a spokesman of the Arab-American Political Action Committee, agrees: The dictator in the Middle East makes the law. Thus, mistrust of the government fits the Middle East mindset. Before September 11, there had been an evolving change in this mindset they were gradually beginning to recognize that the [U.S.] government is here to respect their rights. All that was shattered by the events of September 11. Their rights are being violated by the government. 315 The [United States] is beginning to have trappings of a police state, adds Dr. Maher Hathout, Founder of the Islamic Center of Southern California. It reminds me of Egypt. You cannot understand unless you re from a culture of fear. [It] leaves people emotionally intimidated

62 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL Voluntary Interviews Clearly it is very important and legitimate for the government to want to get as much information and cooperation as possible from the Iraqi community in this country. That s what law enforcement does: gather information. But they need to create an atmosphere of safety. And that s not something [DHS] seem[s] to grasp yet. 317 Doris Meissner, Senior Fellow, Migration Policy Institute and Former Commissioner, INS On November 9, 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft issued a memorandum to federal prosecutors and members of Anti-Terrorism Task Forces (ATTFs), announcing that the FBI would conduct voluntary interviews of 5,000 male non-citizens from 15 countries between the ages of 18 and 33 who had entered the United States after January 1, The list of countries was not released, but was defined as those countries having an Al Qaeda terrorist presence. 318 On March 20, 2002, the attorney general announced a second phase of the project extending the list by an additional 3,000 men. 319 And on the eve of war with Iraq this year, DHS announced that the FBI had identified a number of Iraqi-born individuals in the U.S. that may be invited to participate in voluntary interviews. 320 That the most recent plan applied to Iraqi-born individuals suggested that legal permanent residents and naturalized U.S. citizens would also be interviewed. 321 In the wake of the widespread arrests and detentions of Muslim and Arab men in the weeks following September 11, community leaders warned that the interviews would aggravate growing fears. 322 Indeed, immigration attorneys and advocates have found that voluntary interviews had a chilling effect on community relations. 323 The American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee reported that the voluntary interviews further drove a wedge of distrust between the Arab-American community and the government. This dragnet profiling directed at Middle Eastern men appears to be based on the fallacy that ethnicity, age and country of origin alone merit an investigatory process. 324 Other advocates echoed this, saying that the community was victimized and interviewees felt offended, 325 expressions consistent with a general Arab-American sense of isolat[ion] and ostraci[sm] from the mainstream since 9/ As one community leader in Southfield, Michigan put it: There s a lot of apprehension and anxiety in the community about these visits. Most people are too scared to come out and complain about it. But they ll tell you in private that they are very intimidated. 327 Over time, several members of Congress have also expressed concerns about the interview programs. Representative John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) wrote the attorney general in late 2001, explaining that my constituents and others in the Detroit Metropolitan area have complained of intimidation by FBI agents seeking information from them at work and their places of worship result[ing] in embarrassment, suspicion, and in some cases, termination. 328 On January 28, 2002, Representative Conyers was joined by Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) in a letter to the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, requesting an investigation into the conduct of the voluntary interviews

63 IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND MINORITIES In April 2003, GAO released a report detailing its findings. The report found that most of the interviews were conducted in a respectful and professional manner, but that many of the interviewees did not feel the interviews were truly voluntary. They feared there could be repercussions for declining to participate. For example, as the GAO report notes, interviewees feared that future requests for visa extensions or permanent residency would be denied if they did not agree to be interviewed. 330 Notably, GAO was unable to determine whether or not the interview project has actually helped in combating terrorism. It noted that information resulting from the interview project had not been analyzed as of March 2003 and that according to Justice Department officials, there were no specific plans to do so. 331 In addition, [n]one of [the] law enforcement officials with whom [GAO] spoke could provide examples of investigative leads that resulted from the project. 332 As of February 2002, fewer than 20 interviewees had been arrested primarily on immigration charges. None of these cases appeared to have any connection to terrorism. 333 Indeed, more than half the law enforcement officers [the GAO] spoke with expressed concerns about the quality of the questions asked and the value of the responses obtained in the interview project. 334 While intelligence gains seem limited at best, a number of law enforcement officials believe that the voluntary interviews had a negative effect on relations between the Arab community and law enforcement personnel. 335 As one INS field officer noted: Most of the Attorney General s initiative is a lot of make-work with few returns, but it gets good press. It hasn t helped our community relations. It hurts because the FBI and the other agencies are making arrests using INS statutes. 336 Operation Liberty Shield We understand the legitimate role of the government to protect the security of U.S. citizens at this time of conflict. However, we need not adopt a blanket and discriminatory detention policy. 337 Bishop Thomas G. Wenski, Auxiliary Bishop of Miami Chairman, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration On the eve of war with Iraq, DHS announced that as part of Operation Liberty Shield, it would detain asylum seekers from a group of 33 nations and territories where Al Qaeda or other such organizations were believed to operate. This was the first major DHS announcement on asylum since DHS took over INS functions on March 1, DHS Secretary Tom Ridge held a press conference on March 18, 2003, at which he described the purpose of the detention policy: The detention of asylum seekers is basically predicated on one basic notion. We just want to make sure that those who are seeking asylum, number one, are who they say they are and, two, are legitimately seeking refuge in our country because of political repression at home, not because they choose to cause us harm or bring destruction to our shores. 338 DHS refused officially to disclose the list of effected nationalities, stating that the complete list was law enforcement sensitive. Written information released by DHS reflected 41

64 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL that Iraq was one of the countries. The Lawyers Committee learned that the list also included Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen, as well as Gaza and the West Bank. DHS subsequently advised that the policy did not apply to so-called affirmative asylum applicants (i.e., individuals who apply after entering the United States by filing an asylum application), but instead to arriving asylum seekers a group that is already subject to mandatory detention under an expedited deportation law that was enacted in While these arriving asylum seekers are entitled to request release on parole after they successfully navigate the expedited procedure (by passing a screening interview), under Operation Liberty Shield, asylum seekers from the targeted countries were not to be released from detention even when they met the applicable parole criteria and presented no risk to the public. Instead, they were to be detained for the duration of their asylum proceedings. DHS estimated that the detentions would last on average six months, or longer if a case was appealed. 340 In effect, Operation Liberty Shield deprived a class of asylum seekers, defined by nationality, of the opportunity to have the need for their detention individually assessed. The automatic detention policy was deeply troubling to human rights, faith-based, and refugee advocacy organizations. 341 The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a statement issued by Bishop Thomas G. Wenski, declared that the policy harms individuals who are fleeing terror, is inappropriately discriminatory, violates accepted norms of international law, and undermines our tradition as a safe haven for the oppressed. 342 Similarly, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers criticized the association of asylum seekers and refugees with terrorists as a dangerous and erroneous one, since asylum seekers have themselves escaped acts of persecution and violence, including terrorism, and have proven time and again that they are the victims and not the perpetrators of these attacks. 343 In April 2003, following strong public criticism, DHS terminated Operation Liberty Shield. 344 DHS did not report on the number of asylum seekers who were detained as a result of the policy. Given that parole practices for asylum seekers have become even more restrictive in the past two years, and because the executive branch has refused to release information on the detainees, there is no public information on whether any of those who were detained under the policy were released from detention. AN ONGOING SET OF CONCERNS Local Immigration Enforcement Our New Federalism Since September 11, the federal government has moved to increase local law enforcement s participation in the implementation of federal immigration law. Where possible, the Justice Department has made use of existing law. Where no preexisting grant of authority was available, the Justice Department has unilaterally extended its own jurisdiction. In each instance, the federal government has encountered strong resistance from local officials and others 42

65 IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND MINORITIES concerned both about the drain on scarce local law enforcement resources, and the danger of undermining already fragile community relations. Existing law affords the Justice Department some authority to engage local assistance. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) has, since 1996, authorized the attorney general to enter into agreements with state and local officials to perform immigration enforcement tasks under the attorney general s direction and supervision. 345 The Justice Department entered into such an agreement with the State of Florida in July South Carolina has entered into a similar agreement, 347 and Alabama is close to completing one. 348 No other states have yet followed suit. The INA also provides that the attorney general may authorize state and local law enforcement officials to perform federal immigration functions if the attorney general determines that such assistance is necessary during an actual or imminent mass influx of aliens. 349 Before September 11, this provision had been used only once. 350 Since September 11, the Justice Department has standardized the process by which this assistance may function, adopting a new rule authorizing the attorney general to waive normally required training requirements if state or local law enforcement officers are unable to protect public safety, public health, or national security during a declared mass influx of aliens. 351 The lynchpin of Justice Department efforts to increase state and local involvement is its newfound understanding of the source of state and local officials authority to participate in the enforcement of federal immigration law. Rather than rely on any particular state or local law affording officials such power, the Justice Department asserts that state and local officials have inherent authority to arrest and detain persons who are in violation of immigration laws and whose names have been placed in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). 352 The legal basis for the Justice Department s new position is unclear, and a coalition of advocacy groups has filed a suit under the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to compel the disclosure of the underlying legal analysis. 353 The NCIC is a database containing millions of criminal records entered by the FBI, designed to be accessible to federal, state, and local authorities nationwide. Although Congress intended the NCIC to be used for the national dissemination of criminal records, the Justice Department has proposed expanding the categories of data entered into it to include immigration information on high-risk aliens who fit a terrorist profile. 354 The Justice Department has not stated what criteria it will use to determine who should be considered a high risk alien or who fits within the boundaries of a terrorist profile. The Justice Department would also include in NCIC the names of some 355,000 non-citizens currently under final order of deportation or removal, 355 as well as photographs, fingerprints, and general information about individuals who are out of compliance with the special registration program. 356 The Justice Department has not indicated whether it will implement measures to ensure that NCIC information is correct or to make certain that incorrect information may be removed. 357 Local officials nationwide have voiced their opposition to the federal government s efforts to have them enforce federal immigration law opposition based on concerns that new responsibilities will compromise local officials ability to ensure public safety, and concerns that immigration authority will compromise community relations critical to local policing. 358 For example, the chief of police in Arlington, Texas, asserted: We can t and won t throw our scarce 43

66 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL resources at quasi-political, vaguely criminal, constitutionally questionable, [nor] any other evolving issues or unfunded mandates that aren t high priorities with our citizenry. 359 Chief Charles H. Ramsey of the Metropolitan Washington Police Department echoed this sentiment: To begin in earnest checking immigration status, I can see where that could cause some tremendous strain. Unless there s some reasonable suspicion of a crime occurring, we need to be careful about the role we play. 360 Raymond Flynn of Catholic Alliance, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, have together expressed their concern that the Justice Department s initiative will compromise effective policing techniques, drain precious resources, [and] undermine the important relationships that these agencies have developed with the communities they serve. 361 And in Sacramento, California, Police Chief Arturo Venegas, Jr. also sounded a caution: I don t think it s a good idea. We ve made tremendous inroads into a lot of our immigrant communities. To get into the enforcement of immigration laws would build wedges and walls that have taken a long time to break down. 362 In July 2003, Representative Charles Norwood (R-GA) introduced the Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal Act of 2003 (CLEAR Act). 363 If enacted, the CLEAR Act would establish authority for state and local police to enforce civil immigration laws, and would require the entry of civil immigration information into the NCIC. More than 100 organizations that work with immigrants expressed concern about the CLEAR Act in a recent letter to members of Congress, noting that [p]olice attribute plummeting crime rates over the last decade or so to the community policing philosophy, and that the CLEAR Act would undermine the efforts and successes of local police who have used community policing to gain the trust and confidence of the residents they are charged with protecting. 364 Dwindling Refugee Resettlements Our country can't seem to get its program back on track. The first year after September 11, everybody was willing to defer to the administration. By the middle of the second year, people had had it. If you want to give the management of the program a grade, it's a D-minus. 365 Leonard Glickman, Chairperson of Refugee Council USA and President/CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society Nearly two years after September 11, the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program appears destined to hit a record low for a second year in a row. The program continues to be hampered by lengthy delays in the conduct of new security checks and, as a bipartisan group of members of Congress stated, a seeming chronic inability to meet the refugee admissions targets set in recent presidential determinations. 366 Ironically, the U.S. refugee resettlement program which serves as a lifeline to victims of human rights abuses appears poised to become a permanent victim of the administration s new approach to immigration in the wake of September 11. The United States humanitarian program to bring refugees from around the world to safety in the U.S. has long been a source of pride for Americans and a reminder of the country s 44

67 IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND MINORITIES founding as a haven for the persecuted. As several members of Congress emphasized in a July 2003 letter to President Bush, Protecting refugees who have fled severe religious, political, or other forms of persecution has been a critical component of the United States strong commitment to freedom around the world. 367 Held up as a model for other countries, the program has provided a new life in safety and dignity for hundreds of thousands of refugees over the last two decades. Faith-based and other resettlement groups work with the U.S. government to welcome these refugees into the American community in a unique private-public partnership. But since September 11, this humanitarian lifeline has frayed to a thread, dwindling from an average of 90,000 refugees resettled annually to an anticipated 27,000 expected this year. Although President Bush authorized the resettlement of 70,000 refugees from overseas during the last fiscal year (which ended September 30, 2002), a three-month suspension of the program immediately after September 11 and continued delays relating to new security procedures, meant that only 27,508 refugees came in last year. 368 In October 2002, the president again authorized resettlement of 70,000 refugees; but instead of investing in the staff and infrastructure needed to reach this number, the administration announced that it actually intended to resettle only 50,000 refugees during this fiscal year. Despite this projection, so far this year only 26,317 refugees had been resettled as of August The U.S. refugee resettlement program is currently being hampered by significant delays in the conduct of U.S. government security checks, a lack of sufficient resources, and a failure of management. Expressing concern for the plight of refugees, on April 9, 2003, members of the House of Representatives formed the Bipartisan Congressional Refugee Caucus which is dedicated to affirming the United States leadership and commitment to protection, humanitarian needs and compassionate treatment to refugees and persons in refugee-like circumstances throughout the world. 370 In a July 2003 letter expressing concern about the state of U.S. refugee resettlement, Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Howard Berman (D-CA) together with Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) asked President Bush to honor our nation s longstanding tradition of providing a safe haven for refugees around the world and urged that the United States can and should do better. Extending National Security to Haiti Broad categories of foreigners who arrive in the United States illegally can be detained indefinitely without consideration of their individual circumstance if immigration officials say their release would endanger national security, according to a new ruling by Attorney General John Ashcroft. Previously, the government has jailed individuals or groups who arrived without visas and asked for asylum, but it had not asserted the right to indefinitely detain whole classes of illegal immigrants as security risks. 371 Federation for American Immigration Reform Citing national security and referring to the current circumstances of a declared National Emergency, Attorney General Ashcroft issued a sweeping decision on April 17, 2003, preventing an 18-year-old Haitian asylum seeker from being released from detention. In the 45

68 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL decision (known as In re D-J-), the attorney general concluded that the asylum seeker, David Joseph, was not entitled to an individualized assessment of the need for his detention. 372 There was no allegation that Joseph, who had arrived with about 200 other Haitians by boat in Biscayne Bay, Florida on October 29, 2002, presented any risk to the public. Instead, the attorney general s decision rested on two grounds. First, he concluded that if Joseph and others were released, their release would come to the attention of others in Haiti, encourag[ing] future surges in illegal migration by sea, and injur[ing] national security by diverting valuable Coast Guard and [Defense Department] resources from counterterrorism and homeland security responsibilities. 373 Second, the attorney general asserted that the U.S. government lacked the resources to screen the Haitians before releasing them, raising further risks to national security. This latter concern, the attorney general explained, was fully supported by the State Department. He said that the State Department had observed an increase in aliens from countries such as Pakistan using Haiti as a staging point for migration to the United States. 374 Attorney General Ashcroft s remark, and particularly his use of the phrase staging point, prompted an initial denial from the State Department. Stuart Pratt, a State Department spokesperson said, We are all scratching our heads. We are asking each other Where did they get that? 375 Although it was eventually confirmed that the State Department had indeed made the assertion, U.S. Representative Kendrick Meek (D-FL) stated: This is outright discrimination and racism by this Bush Administration. There is justice in America for everybody but the Haitians. Someone needs to call the president and let him know we are at war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and not the Haitian people. 376 The expansive wording of the In re D-J- decision raises concerns that the administration may seek to use it to justify the detention of broad categories of immigration detainees, beyond Haitian asylum seekers. 377 The decision directs immigration judges to consider national security arguments in all future bond proceedings involving aliens seeking to enter the United States illegally, where the INS attorney offers evidence from sources in the executive branch with relevant expertise establishing that significant national security interests are implicated. 378 Further, the attorney general stated that even if Joseph were entitled to an individual hearing, such a hearing could be based on general considerations applicable to a category of migrants an approach that would render any such hearing meaningless by disregarding the individual s specific circumstances. 379 Taken together, these pronouncements could be read to suggest that whenever the executive contends that significant national security interests are implicated, an immigrant may be denied an individual assessment of whether her detention is necessary. RECOMMENDATIONS 1. The Justice Department and DHS should continue cooperating with the OIG by implementing the remaining recommendations addressing the treatment of the September 11 detainees by the OIG s October 3, 2003 deadline. In addition, Congress should require the OIG to report semi-annually any complaints of alleged abuses of civil liberties by DHS employees and officials, including government efforts to address any such complaints. 46

69 IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND MINORITIES 2. The Justice Department should rescind the expanded custody procedures regulation that allows non-citizens to be detained for extended periods without notice of the charges against them, as well as the expanded regulation permitting automatic stays of immigration judge bond decisions. 3. The president should direct the attorney general to vacate his decision in In re DJ and restore prior law recognizing that immigration detainees are entitled to an individualized assessment of their eligibility for release from detention. Congress should enact a law making clear that arriving asylum seekers should also have their eligibility for release assessed by an immigration judge. 4. The administration should fully revive its Refugee Resettlement Program and publicly affirm the United States commitment to restoring resettlement numbers to pre-2001 levels (90,000 refugees each year). It should ensure that adequate resources are devoted to refugee security checks so that these procedures do not cause unnecessary delays. 5. The Justice Department should respect the judgment of local law enforcement officials and cease efforts to enlist local officials in the enforcement of federal immigration law. 47

70 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL 48

71 CHAPTER 4 UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES INTRODUCTION The federal government s efforts to address the threat posed by Al Qaeda have produced a complex and disorienting landscape of new law. Military jurisdiction is used to sidestep constitutional due process in the criminal justice system. Criminal labels are used to sidestep international laws protecting combatants held in preventive military detention. The executive s mix-and-match approach, which insists on an unprecedented level of deference from the federal courts, has seen bedrock principles of the rule of law transformed into little more than tactical options. The new normal in punishment and prevention is characterized by the heavy use of extra-legal institutions and the propensity to treat like cases in different ways. Terrorist suspects outside the United States are detained in a new regime of closed detention and interrogation at Guantánamo Bay, in Afghanistan, and on the British island of Diego Garcia. And the administration has established military commissions, outside the existing military and civilian legal systems, to try suspected terrorists for a range of crimes, some of which have never before been subject to military justice. Within the United States, citizens and others suspected of threatening national security are subject to a blended system of criminal law enforcement and military detention. And despite the successful use of the criminal justice system in multiple national security-related prosecutions, federal officials have warned that military tribunals remain an option if efforts to win criminal convictions in ongoing prosecutions appear to be turning against them. This chapter describes these developments and explores the effects of post-september 11 counterterrorism efforts on the rule of law. LEGAL BACKGROUND The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. 380 James Madison, Federalist Papers No. 47 As Madison s famous warning makes clear, the framers experience with the British Crown had given them abundant reason to fear unchecked executive power. The Declaration of Independence was leveled against the absolute tyranny of an executive King George III and his colonial governors which had affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power and had depriv[ed them], in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial 49

72 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL by Jury. 381 Writing against these practices, the framers put freedom from arbitrary detention by the executive at the heart of the liberty interests the U.S. Constitution protects. 382 In the United States, the executive thus has a specific, limited set of legal tools under which to detain and prosecute those it suspects of participating in violent activities. First, Congress has enacted a long list of criminal statutes prohibiting certain conduct from the possession of explosive materials to the provision of material support to a terrorist organization. 383 There are likewise civil statutes providing for administrative detention in some circumstances (for certain violations of immigration laws, 384 for example, or for reasons of mental incompetence 385 ), and military statutes setting forth the rules of conduct for members of the U.S. armed forces. 386 Anyone detained, whether for alleged violations of criminal law or for legitimate administrative purposes, is entitled to basic protections to ensure their detention is fair, including the due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment. 387 In all criminal prosecutions, defendants are also entitled under the Sixth Amendment to the assistance of counsel and to confront witnesses against them. Critically, anyone detained by the executive can seek independent review of the legality of the detention by petitioning for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court. The privilege of habeas corpus cannot be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it, 388 and even then only when Congress acts to do so. 389 The executive s power to detain based on criminal, civil, or military law is also constrained by international law. A number of international human rights treaties protect the right to independent judicial review of detention including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights. 390 These provisions apply even in cases involving terrorism. As the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has emphasized: [E]ven in emergency situations, the writ of habeas corpus may not be suspended or rendered ineffective. To hold the contrary view [would] be equivalent to attributing uniquely judicial functions to the executive branch, which would violate the principle of separation of powers, a basic characteristic of the rule of law and of democratic systems. 391 In the special context of international armed conflict, the United States must also abide by international humanitarian law also known as the law of war. International humanitarian law establishes the basic rights that must be afforded any individual caught up in the conflict. 392 The primary instruments of humanitarian law are the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which the United States has signed and ratified. The Geneva Conventions govern the treatment of wounded and sick soldiers (First Geneva Convention), sailors (Second Geneva Convention), prisoners of war (Third Geneva Convention), and civilians (Fourth Geneva Convention). Under this regime, [e]very person in enemy hands must have some status under international law. 393 Specifically, one is either a prisoner of war and, as such covered by the Third Convention, [or] a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law. 394 The United States military has long 50

73 UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES acknowledged this principle, explaining that those determined not to be prisoners of war are to be treated as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. 395 Combatants and civilians are treated differently under humanitarian law. Combatants defined principally as members of the armed forces of a Party to a conflict may be held as prisoners of war until the end of the hostilities as a means of preventing them from returning to participate in the conflict. 397 Although they may be interrogated, they are required to provide only bare information about their identity and may not be tortured or threatened in any way. WHAT IS A PRISONER OF WAR? Prisoners of war are persons who fall into enemy hands and belong to one of the following categories: (1) Members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces. (2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfill the following conditions: (a) They are commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates (b) They have a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) They carry arms openly; and (d) They conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. A prisoner of war may not be tried for using violence in the conduct of war (the so-called combatants privilege ). He may be tried for war crimes or crimes against humanity, however, under the same justice system applicable to a member of the detaining state s military. (In the United States, members of the military are subject to court martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, as described below.) Individuals who do not meet the definition of prisoners of war Third Geneva Convention (1949), Article including individuals linked exclusively to international terrorist groups have traditionally been treated as civilians. 398 Civilians who participate directly in hostilities may be criminally prosecuted for their conduct under the domestic criminal law of the captor. 399 If there is any doubt as to a detainee s status, Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention requires that the detaining authority provide an individualized status hearing by a competent tribunal. Until the tribunal makes a determination in the detainee s case, he or she must be regarded as a prisoner of war. The United States has long complied with these procedures, 400 and thousands of such hearings were held in the Vietnam and Gulf Wars. 401 Finally, the United States has long maintained a separate body of substantive and procedural rules governing the prosecution and detention of members of the U.S. military and, consistent with the Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war. U.S. military courts, called courts martial, are established by Congress and governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). 402 Except for trial by jury, a court martial under the UCMJ has virtually every 51

74 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL protection provided to a civilian defendant prosecuted in the criminal justice system, including the right to appeal to an independent appellate court (with civilian judges) and the right to pursue a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. 403 EXTRA-LEGAL INSTITUTIONS The broad contours of at least two of the novel post-september 11 structures are by now well known. First, the executive branch has established an off-shore military detention regime for the evaluation and disposition of international detainees. The detention camp at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba is staffed by U.S. military personnel, and populated by some of the individuals seized by U.S. forces and their allies during the war in Afghanistan, as well as individuals seized by the United States in connection with separate counterterrorism operations in Bosnia, Gambia, and Pakistan. In addition, the executive has established military commissions to try at least some of those held at Guantánamo and, potentially, non-citizen terrorism suspects in the United States. 404 Each of these structures operates outside the substantive and procedural rules applicable in U.S. criminal courts or U.S. courts martial, and outside international law governing the detention of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. The decision whether a detainee is to be held indefinitely in administrative detention or is to be tried in a military commission appears to rest entirely within the discretion of the executive branch. Guantánamo Bay In early 2002, the U.S. military removed several hundred individuals from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay. There were initial reports that these individuals suffered physical mistreatment, especially during the transfer from Afghanistan, when they were bound hand and foot and forced to wear goggles and ear blocks that deprived them of sight and hearing; many were also required to shave their beards. 405 Since then, many additional detainees have been brought in from Afghanistan and other countries. About 660 detainees are now housed at Guantánamo including nationals from at least 40 countries, speaking 17 different languages. Three are children, the youngest aged 13. Since the camp opened, about 70 detainees, mainly Afghans and Pakistanis, have been released. 406 The executive has refused to release the names of the detainees and has permitted access only to the International Committee of the Red Cross and some foreign diplomatic officials. The U.S. government has declined to term any of the Guantánamo detainees either combatants, entitled to prisoner-of-war protections under the Geneva Conventions, or criminal suspects, entitled to the protections of the U.S. criminal justice system. The uncertain legal basis for the Guantánamo camp, and the uncertain status of those held there, has become the subject of widespread international concern. 52

75 UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES LIFE IN CAMP DELTA Since April 28, 2002, the Guantánamo detainees have been kept in a newly built camp of wire mesh-sided cells called Camp Delta. The maximum security cells are approximately eight feet by seven feet, and the mesh walls permit communication among neighboring cells. 407 The children are housed separately. 408 The detainees have not been charged with any crimes, and they have no idea how long they will be held or if they will eventually be tried. About 120 have reportedly been rewarded for cooperating with interrogators; they have been moved to a medium security wing, called Camp 4, where they live in groups of ten and are allowed more exercise time, books, and some other liberties. Noncooperating detainees are allowed between one and four hours of exercise per week although under the Geneva Conventions, even detainees in disciplinary confinement must be provided a minimum of two hours of exercise a day. 409 Lights are kept on 24 hours. 410 There have been 32 reported suicide attempts. 411 While U.S. officials have asserted that the Guantánamo prisoners are battlefield detainees who were engaged in combat when arrested, 412 some were arrested in places far from Afghanistan. Soon after the camp opened, Guantánamo became home to six Algerians (five claiming naturalized Bosnian citizenship), forcibly transported by U.S. officials from Bosnia to Guantánamo. As discussed in more detail in Chapter 5, Bosnian officials arrested the men in October 2001 on charges of plotting to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia, and in January 2002 handed them over to the United States in defiance of two separate orders from the Bosnian courts. 413 Also in Guantánamo are two U.K. residents who were arrested in November 2002 during a business trip to Gambia Bisher al-rawi and Jamil al-banna. Al- Rawi, an Iraqi, has lived in the United Kingdom for 19 years, having fled with his father from Saddam Hussein s regime. The British government granted Al-Banna, a Jordanian, refugee status in 2000 based on a risk of persecution in his home country. The Gambian police kept the two men in incommunicado detention for a month, while Gambian and American officials interrogated them. In December 2002, U.S. agents took the men to the U.S. military base at Bagram, Afghanistan, and, in March 2003, transported them to Guantánamo, where they remain. 414 At least one other Guantánamo detainee is reported to have been arrested in Africa. 415 Of those Guantánamo detainees who were taken from Afghanistan, many were handed over to American forces after being picked up by Northern Alliance warlords or other third parties. 416 In many cases, U.S. officials certainty as to the detainees identity has depended on the accounts of Northern Alliance commanders or others who might have exploited U.S. eagerness to capture terrorists as a means of settling personal or factional scores, or harvesting a generous ransom. Indeed, U.S. forces had dropped leaflets promising millions of dollars for helping catch Al Qaeda and Taliban murderers enough money to take care of your family, 53

76 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. 417 In the absence of individualized Article 5 hearings afforded battlefield detainees under the Third Geneva Convention hearings that determine the status of those detained there is genuine concern that noncombatants may have been caught up in the Guantánamo net. Many of the detainees families insist that their detained relatives were involved in legitimate humanitarian work or other activities unrelated to combat or terrorism. 418 INNOCENTS AT GUANTÁNAMO? Though the administration had described the Guantánamo detainees collectively as among the most dangerous, best trained vicious killers on the face of the earth, 419 U.S. officials have now conceded that at least some are harmless enough to be set free. Four detainees were released in October 2002, for example, three Afghans and a Pakistani. Two of the Afghans appeared upwards of seventy years old. One of them, Mohammed Sadiq, walked with a cane and claimed to be 90. Another, Mohammed Hagi Fiz, a toothless and frail man with a bushy white beard, claimed to be 105 years old [and weighed] 123 pounds. Fiz said he was arrested by American forces eight months ago while being treated at a clinic in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan. Tied up and blindfolded, he was flown by helicopter to Kandahar and later by plane to Guantánamo. My family has no idea where I am, Fiz said. All they know is that I went to a doctor for treatment and disappeared. 420 Having failed to provide Article 5 hearings, the administration has advanced various arguments to explain the basis for the Guantánamo detentions. With respect to Taliban fighters captured during the Afghanistan war, the administration has argued that while these fighters might be the official armed force of Afghanistan (a party to the Geneva Conventions), the Taliban army was a criminal force whose members did not distinguish themselves from civilians, and who made a practice of committing war crimes, in violation of Article 4(A)(2) of the Third Geneva Convention. On this basis, the administration argues that all Taliban soldiers are undeserving of Geneva Convention prisoner-of-war protections. 421 The blanket labeling as unlawful of an entire nation s regular army because of a practice of even widespread war crimes is unprecedented. 422 The United States respected the prisoner-of-war status of German soldiers in World War II, the armed forces of North Korea in the Korean War, North Vietnamese forces (and the guerrilla National Liberation Front) in the Vietnam War, and Iraqi military in both Gulf wars. 423 Further, while the Taliban army did not have uniforms of the type customary in Western armies, there are abundant reports of a trademark black turban worn by Taliban members. 424 There is thus some question about whether the Taliban had a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance the Geneva Convention standard for identifying combatants. 425 With respect to non-taliban Al Qaeda fighters, the administration has argued that they have no right under international law to participate in hostilities because Al Qaeda is not the official armed force of a party to the Geneva Conventions. The administration also argues that Al Qaeda fails to meet the minimum standards for a lawful militia or other irregular armed force under Article 4(A) of the Third Geneva Convention because Al Qaeda members do not wear uniforms or otherwise distinguish themselves from the general population, and members 54

77 UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES make a practice of attacking civilians in violation of the law of war. But whatever Al Qaeda s status, the United States remains bound to Geneva Convention requirements, which ensure that individuals who are not a part of an official armed force even if they have directly engaged in combat 426 are subject to criminal prosecution, not indefinite detention without judicial review. 427 In any case, battlefield reports from Afghanistan have indicated that the distinction between Taliban and Al Qaeda forces was not always clear. For example, at least one Taliban unit was an embedded Al Qaeda contingent, apparently forming part of the regular Taliban army. 428 For this reason, an Article 5 hearing is essential. Armed U.S. Forces are not always in uniform. This photograph, taken by the Associated Press, shows a U.S. Special Forces soldier talking to colleagues after an assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan on September 5, Photo: Tom Gilbert, AP Wide World As for the Bosnian detainees and others taken into custody far from the battlefield of an armed conflict, the law of war has no bearing; civilians detained by the U.S. government on suspicion of terrorist activities are entitled to the protections surrounding international extradition and criminal prosecution. At least one court has already made this clear. In September 2002, in a case brought by four of the six Bosnian men now held at Guantánamo, the Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina found that the transfer of the men to U.S. custody without due process and in defiance of a court order was a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and other applicable law. Bosnian officials had previously indicated that the six could be turned over to the United States if they were wanted on U.S. criminal warrants, but the U.S. Embassy had refused to say whether warrants had issued, and one senior U.S. official dismissed the matter of warrants as a formality

78 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL THE LEGAL STATUS OF GUANTÁNAMO: SOVEREIGNTY VERSUS COMPLETE JURISDICTION AND CONTROL Some family members of the Guantánamo detainees have filed suit in U.S. federal court, asking the courts to review the legal basis for their relatives detention. In March 2003, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that the detainees families had no right to invoke the jurisdiction of [U.S.] courts to test the constitutionality or the legality of restraints on [the detainees ] liberty, 430 because they were not being held on U.S. sovereign territory. The court based its decision on Johnson v. Eisentrager, a 1950 U.S. Supreme Court case involving 21 German nationals in U.S. custody. The Germans had been tried in a U.S. military commission and convicted of war crimes for assisting Japanese forces in China after the surrender of Germany during World War II. 431 In Eisentrager, the Supreme Court held that the Germans had no right to petition U.S. courts for habeas corpus because the scenes of their offense, their capture, their trial, and their punishment had all occurred outside the sovereign territory of the United States. 432 In the Guantánamo cases, the D.C. court of appeals dismissed as irrelevant the distinguishing fact that the Germans had been charged and tried under applicable law (the Guantánamo detainees have not). 433 Rather, the court of appeals found that under the terms of the perpetual lease agreement signed by Cuba and the United States in 1903 (a lease that cannot be terminated without the consent of both parties), 434 ultimate sovereignty of Guantánamo is reserved to Cuba. Despite the fact that the lease also gives the United States complete jurisdiction and control over the territory authority that the United States has exercised for more than a century the court held that the U.S. courts had no power to review the United States current actions there. 435 Military Commissions We all want to fight terrorism... [but] shredding the Constitution which applies to all persons, not just citizens isn t the way to do it. 436 Robert A. Levy, Cato Institute President Bush triggered an avalanche of public debate when he issued an executive order on November 13, 2001, announcing the establishment of military commissions (the November Order). 437 The November Order authorizes the creation of military commissions for trying non-citizens suspected of violations of the laws of war and other applicable laws. 438 The order applies to a non-citizen if the president unilaterally finds reason to believe that such individual has engaged in, aided or abetted, or conspired to commit, acts of international terrorism, or acts in preparation therefore, that could harm the United States. 439 The prosecutor and the adjudicating panel in such proceedings will be military officers answerable only to the president. The president will also be responsible for final review of any verdict. 440 Under the order, proceedings may be conducted partly or entirely in secret, using secret evidence and witnesses (including hearsay evidence from unidentified informants). 441 The Defense Department subsequently issued more detailed procedural rules for the commissions in a March 21, 2002 Military Commission Order, 442 and an April 30, 2003 set of 56

79 UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES Military Commission Instructions. 443 Both sets of rules evidence some effort to address a number of concerns raised by bipartisan critics of the commissions. The rules affirm the presumption of innocence; 444 require that guilt be proven beyond a reasonable doubt; 445 provide for military defense counsel at government expense; and permit limited participation by civilian defense counsel at the defendants expense. 446 Despite these improvements, however, military commission proceedings provide markedly fewer fairness safeguards than either U.S. criminal or military court proceedings. First, the commission structure will be under the president s complete control, with no appeal to any civilian court. Second, despite White House assurances that military commissions would be used to try only enemy war criminals for offenses against the international laws of war, 447 the chargeable offenses expand military jurisdiction into areas never before considered subject to military justice. This unprecedented jurisdictional reach is achieved by broadening the definition of armed conflict 448 the Geneva Convention term that establishes when the law of war is triggered to include isolated hostile acts or unsuccessful attempts to commit such acts, including crimes such as terrorism or hijacking that traditionally fall within the ordinary purview of the federal courts. 449 Third, the government has broad discretion to close proceedings to outside scrutiny in the interest of national security. 450 COMPARING FAIRNESS PROTECTIONS RIGHTS U.S. CRIMINAL U.S. COURT MILITARY COURT MARTIAL COMMISSION Jury Yes No No Counsel of defendant s choice Yes Yes No Know all evidence against the defendant Obtain all evidence in favor of the defense Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Attorney-client confidentiality Yes Yes No Speedy trial Yes Yes No Appeal to an independent court Yes Yes No Remain silent Yes Yes Yes Proof beyond a reasonable doubt Yes Yes Yes Finally, the military commission rules impose substantial restrictions on the nature of legal representation to which defendants are entitled. Commission defendants will be represented by assigned military lawyers even if they do not want them. 451 While defendants will also be entitled to (eligible) civilian lawyers, there are strong personal and professional disincentives for civilians to serve. Unless a defendant or his family or friends can provide 57

80 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL financing, civilian defense lawyers will receive no fees and will themselves have to cover all personal and case-related expenses. 452 Civilian defense lawyers must be U.S. citizens and eligible for access to information classified secret. 453 During the trials, civilian lawyers may not leave the site without Defense Department approval; and they may not discuss the case with outside legal, academic, forensic, or other experts. 454 Furthermore, civilian lawyers (as well as their clients) can be denied access to any information including potential exculpatory evidence to the extent the prosecution determines it necessary to protect the interests of the United States. 455 The Defense Department may (without notice) monitor attorney-client consultations; and lawyers will be subject to sanction if they fail to reveal information they reasonably believe necessary to prevent significant harm to national security. 456 The scope of these restrictions and the extent to which they are inconsistent with well-settled rules of legal ethics have provoked a troubled debate within the legal profession. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has taken the position that it is unethical for a criminal defense lawyer to represent a person accused before these military commissions because the conditions imposed upon defense counsel before these commissions make it impossible for counsel to provide adequate or ethical representation. 457 In contrast, the National Institute of Military Justice has urged qualified civilian defense counsel to give serious consideration to participating, on the ground that the highest service a lawyer can render in a free society is to provide qualified independent representation for those most disfavored by government. 458 The American Bar Association made no specific recommendation regarding civilian counsel participation, but adopted a resolution call[ing] upon Congress and the executive to ensure that defendants in military commission trials have the opportunity to receive the zealous and effective assistance of Civilian Defense Counsel (CDC), and [to] oppos[e] any qualification requirements or rules that would restrict the full participation of CDC who have required security clearances

81 UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES THE PRECEDENT FOR MILITARY COMMISSIONS: EX PARTE QUIRIN Photo: Richard Quirin The executive branch has argued that military tribunals have an established history in the United States, and in particular that the language of [the president s November 2001] order is similar to the language of a military tribunal order issued by President Franklin Roosevelt. 460 In the World War II case that the current executive refers to, Ex Parte Quirin, 461 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the jurisdiction of a military commission to try eight German army soldiers, including one U.S. citizen, for violations of the law of war. (All were found guilty, and six were executed.) But the circumstances of the Quirin defendants were quite different from those of the enemy combatants apparently subject to military prosecution today. The Quirin defendants surrendered to the FBI, admitting that they were members of the official armed force of a state with which the United States was in a declared war. They snuck behind enemy lines, landing from a military submarine. Two of the four crimes they were charged with relieving, harboring or corresponding with the enemy, and spying were specifically defined in the Articles of War passed by Congress; these Articles had authorized trial either by court martial or military commission. 462 Meanwhile, several U.S. civilians who had allegedly conspired with the Nazi saboteurs in Quirin were arrested and tried in U.S. criminal courts, not in military commissions. 463 Today, Congress has neither declared general war, nor authorized the president s planned military commissions. The enemy combatants so far designated do not appear to be members of any uniformed armed force, yet they are subject to military prosecution for offenses never before considered war crimes. 464 They are not also entitled to confidential communications with their counsel; access to all relevant evidence; and review of the lawfulness of the proceedings in the U.S. Supreme Court all of which were afforded to the Quirin defendants. International Reaction [International cooperation in fighting terrorism would be] imperiled when foreign governments don t trust us to respect the basic rights of the people we ask them to send us. 465 General James Orenstein, Former Associate Deputy Attorney On July 3, 2003, the Defense Department announced that six current detainees at Guantánamo were eligible for trial by military commission. Among these six were U.K. citizens Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abassi, and Australian citizen David Hicks. 466 Although the identities of the 59

82 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL other three have yet to be revealed, the U.S. government reportedly does not consider the six to be important terrorist figures. 467 As American officials explained: [T]he first group of people charged would be low-level suspects, who, in exchange for plea bargains, might be persuaded to divulge information. 468 The designation of citizens from two close U.S. allies sparked serious protests in both countries. The U.K. government advanced strong reservations about the military commission, which it vowed it would continue to raise with the U.S. 469 Some 200 Members of Parliament signed a petition calling for repatriation of the British detainees for trial in the United Kingdom. 470 Feroz Abassi s mother had earlier sought a court order directing the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office to intercede on her son s behalf. Though a British appeals court declined to grant relief in November 2002, the three-judge panel strongly criticized U.S. policy: What appears to us to be objectionable is that Mr. Abassi is subject to indefinite detention in territory over which the United States has exclusive control, with no opportunity to challenge the legitimacy of his detention before any court or tribunal. The court expressed the hope that the anxiety we have expressed will be drawn to their attention. 471 The United States had indicated that it would extradite the British detainees to the United Kingdom if [t]hey can handle the prosecution, but the U.K. government concluded it could not guarantee prosecution because of the difficulty in obtaining evidence admissible in a British court. 472 Ultimately, U.K. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith sought and obtained some concessions for the U.K detainees most important, promises not to seek the death penalty or to monitor their consultations with counsel, and to consider letting them serve their sentences in U.K. prisons. 473 The United States offered the same concessions to the Australian government regarding David Hicks. 474 FALSE CONFESSIONS? Before learning that his son was slated for a military commission trial, Azmat Begg, Moazzam Begg s father, had described receiving an ominous message from his son, saying he was going to do something drastic which was going to affect the whole family. Begg s father expressed fear that this might mean that his son had made a false confession to secure better treatment, or at least a resolution to his long months of doing nothing and being charged with nothing at Guantánamo Bay. 475 According to his family, by July 2003, Begg had been held in a windowless cell in Bagram, Afghanistan, for a year, and in Guantánamo Bay for an additional five months. 476 The possibility that prolonged detention and questioning might produce such a false confession is a familiar concern to law enforcement, sometimes referred to as the wear down process. 477 One forensic psychologist has concluded, for example, that an innocent suspect could be made to admit almost anything under the pressure of continuous questioning and suggestion. 478 By way of comparison, in the famous New York Central Park Jogger Case, five defendants were convicted based on their false confessions of rape. The boys, 14 to 16 years old, had been in custody and interrogated on and off for 14 to 30 hours 479 ; law enforcement manuals generally caution against interrogations lasting longer than two hours

83 UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES Soon after these offers were extended, on August 11, 2003, U.S. officials suggested that the three allied detainees were expected to plead guilty to war crimes and to renounce terrorism and assist investigators in exchange for a firm release date. 481 The perception of special treatment for the U.K. and Australian defendants has provoked resentment in other countries. An Egyptian commentator, for example, noted that exempting British and Australian suspects from the death penalty invites accusations of selective justice, and risk[s] further condemnation on an already sensitive issue. 482 Indeed, as noted by Khalid al-odah, a former Kuwaiti air force pilot whose son Fawzi is at Guantánamo: Now that the [Iraq] war has ended, the [Kuwaiti] government is becoming more active on this issue. The fact that the British raised issues made the Kuwaitis push more. 483 On August 21, 2003, ten national law society and bar leaders from Sweden, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Australia, England and Wales, and Canada issued a public letter stating that only two legally acceptable courses of action were now open to the United States with regard to the Guantánamo detainees: trial in normal U.S. civilian courts or repatriation for trial in their home countries. 484 In our view it is not for the US government to concede basic rights as a favour. All detainees are entitled to a fair and lawful trial as of right. 485 DIFFERENT TREATMENT OF LIKE CASES Indeed any American citizen seized in a part of the world where American troops are present e.g., the former Yugoslavia, the Philippines, or Korea could be imprisoned indefinitely if the Executive asserted that the area was a zone of active combat. 486 Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (Motz, J., dissenting) A second feature of the new normal in punishment and prevention is the different treatment of individual cases with seemingly identical features. The choice to subject someone to military or criminal detention, to declare someone an enemy combatant or a prisoner of war, seems unconstrained by any guiding set of principles. As one Justice Department official put it: There s no bright line. 487 John Walker Lindh and Yaser Hamdi The executive branch has accused both John Walker Lindh and Yaser Hamdi of supporting terrorism and participating in hostilities against the United States in Afghanistan. Both are U.S. citizens, captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 by Northern Alliance warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, and handed over to U.S. forces shortly thereafter. Yet the executive brought criminal charges against Lindh through the normal civilian criminal justice system, affording Lindh all due process protections available under the Constitution, once he was brought to the United States. Hamdi, in contrast, has remained in indefinite incommunicado detention for 16 months. He has never seen a lawyer. 61

84 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL John Walker Lindh Lindh traveled to Afghanistan in 2002, according to his plea bargain statement, with the purpose of assist[ing] the Taliban government in opposing the warlords of the Northern Alliance. 488 He arrived at the front on September 6, 2001, five days before the September 11 attacks. 489 Northern Alliance forces captured Lindh in November 2001, and turned him over to U.S. custody on December 1. Later that month he was returned to the United States. Federal prosecutors soon brought a ten-count criminal indictment against Lindh in federal district court in Virginia, charging him with conspiring with Al Qaeda to kill U.S. nationals, and other offenses. 490 Lindh s counsel immediately sought to suppress the government s strongest evidence confessions Lindh had purportedly made while shackled, cold, hungry, dehydrated and in feverish pain from an untreated leg wound, and after having requested access to a lawyer. 491 FBI agents persisted in interrogating Lindh even after learning that Lindh s family had retained counsel for him, apparently ignoring repeated warnings from a Justice Department lawyer that evidence obtained by such questioning would likely be inadmissible in court. 492 A VOICE FROM THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT In December 2001, Jesselyn Radack, a lawyer in the Justice Department s Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, advised interrogators in Afghanistan by that continued FBI questioning of Lindh would not [be] authorized by law, because Lindh s family had retained legal counsel for him. In March 2002, after federal district court Judge T.S. Ellis III requested copies of all Justice Department correspondence about the Lindh interrogations, Radack discovered that the Department had submitted only two of the dozen or more s she had written. She later insisted that [t]he s were definitely relevant [because t]hey undermined the public statements the Justice Department was making about how they didn t think Lindh s rights were violated. Radack also charged that [s]omeone deliberately purged the s from the file. In violation of the rules of federal procedure, they were going to withhold these documents from the court. Eventually, the Justice Department did provide the most important of the s for submission to the judge. Soon after, Radack left the Justice Department to work at a private law firm. When the s were anonymously leaked to Newsweek in June 2002, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation of Radack. 493 Having initially touted Lindh s prosecution as a major terrorist case, 494 the government began negotiating to settle the case. Lindh agreed to cooperate with government investigators and to plead guilty to supplying services as a foot soldier for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance while carrying a rifle and two grenades. All other charges were dismissed, including allegations that Lindh had taken up arms against the United States. 495 Because the case did not go to trial, the evidence of Lindh s ill-treatment after capture was never examined in court. He was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. 62

85 UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES Yaser Hamdi Northern Alliance forces captured Yaser Hamdi, an American citizen raised in Saudi Arabia, in November 2001, and handed him over to U.S. custody soon after. In January 2002, U.S. officials brought Hamdi to Guantánamo, where his interrogators later discovered his U.S. citizenship. In April 2002, the military transported him from Guantánamo to a U.S. military base in Norfolk, Virginia. In contrast with its treatment of Lindh, however, the executive declined to bring criminal or any specific charges of misconduct. Instead, the president designated Hamdi an enemy combatant. 496 On June 11, 2002, Hamdi s father, Isam Fouad Hamdi, filed a habeas corpus petition on Hamdi s behalf, as next friend, seeking review of the lawfulness of his son s detention. 497 To enable the petitioner to pursue his case, federal district court judge Robert G. Doumar ordered the government to allow a public defender to meet with Hamdi in private. The government appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated the original order. It remanded the matter to the district court to reconsider the extent to which the court had jurisdiction to review Hamdi s detention as a designated enemy combatant. 498 On August, 16, 2002, Judge Doumar rejected the executive s contention that only minimal judicial review of this designation was appropriate and ordered Justice Department attorneys to produce for the court s private review the factual evidence underlying the enemy combatant determination. The court also demanded to know the screening criteria utilized to determine [Hamdi s] status, as well as information regarding those who had made the determination. 499 Judge Doumar told the government attorneys that he would not be a rubber stamp 500 for the executive. On appeal, the Fourth Circuit again vacated Judge Doumar s order. 501 While ruling largely in the executive s favor, the appeals court began by rejecting the sweeping proposition... that with no meaningful judicial review, any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely without charges or counsel on the government s sayso. 502 Still, it found sufficient basis upon which to conclude that Hamdi s detention conforms with a legitimate exercise of the war powers given the executive by the Constitution and [is] consistent with the laws of Congress, based on the purportedly undisputed fact that Hamdi was captured in a zone of active combat operations in a foreign country, and has been determine[ed] by the executive [to be] allied with enemy forces. 503 Dissenting from the denial of Hamdi s request for rehearing en banc (by the entire court), several Fourth Circuit judges harshly criticized the panel s factual premise. As Judge Michael Luttig explained: [I]t simply is not undisputed that Hamdi was seized in a foreign combat zone since Hamdi has not been permitted to speak for himself or even through counsel as to those circumstances. 504 Judge Diana Gribbon Motz pointed out the chilling ramifications of the panel s ruling: [A]ny of the embedded American journalists, covering the war in Iraq or any member of a humanitarian organization working in Afghanistan, could be imprisoned indefinitely without being charged with a crime or provided access to counsel if the Executive designated that person as an enemy combatant

86 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL Hamdi s lawyers anticipate seeking U.S. Supreme Court review in the fall. Hamdi remains at the military brig in Virginia, held in incommunicado detention. There is no information on his condition. James Ujaama and José Padilla José Padilla and James Ujaama are both U.S. citizens accused of plotting with Al Qaeda to prepare for terrorist operations in the United States. They were both arrested in the United States. Ujaama was indicted and then entered a plea agreement with prosecutors. Padilla, however, has never been formally charged with any offense. Instead, the president designated him an enemy combatant, and the Defense Department took him into military custody. James Ujaama U.S. citizen James Ujaama was initially arrested and detained under the federal material witness statute on July 22, On August 28, 2002, he was indicted on two counts of conspiracy to provide material support and resources to Al Qaeda in the form of training, facilities, computer services, safe houses, and personnel. The Justice Department alleged that he had planned with others to construct a firearms and military training camp in Oregon. 511 On April 14, 2003, Ujaama entered a guilty plea to a charge of providing goods and services to the Taliban. He acknowledged that he had assisted a co-conspirator s travel to Afghanistan, that he had delivered currency to and installed software programs for Taliban officials in Afghanistan, and that he had participated in a website that raised money for Taliban programs. He will serve two years in prison, and has pledged to cooperate with law enforcement authorities. 512 PROVIDING MATERIAL SUPPORT OR RESOURCES TO A FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION Since September 11, 2001, federal prosecutors have charged a growing number of individuals with knowingly providing material support or resources to an organization the Secretary of State has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The material support ban was first established in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), and later amended by the USA PATRIOT Act. 506 Although the statute was used only three times before September 11, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in 2000 that two components of AEDPA s lengthy definition of material support, the provision of training and personnel, were unconstitutionally vague and could criminalize a wide range of First Amendment-protected speech. 507 In amending AEDPA, however, the USA PATRIOT Act did not take out either of these terms, and instead added expert advice or assistance to the definition. David Cole, a professor at Georgetown Law School, has argued that the statute is now so vague it would make it a crime for a Quaker to send a book on Gandhi s theory of nonviolence to the leader of a terrorist group. 508 Questions about the constitutionality of the statute have arisen in the cases of those charged under the amended law resulting in conflicting decisions in federal courts. 509 The issue will likely be resolved only when cases involving the material support statute go before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Ujaama prosecution is by no means the only national security-related case in which the executive has employed civilian criminal justice mechanisms to obtain convictions. A jury trial in Detroit of four noncitizens from Algeria and Morocco, for example, recently resulted in two defendants being 64

87 UNCLASSIFIED DETAINEES convicted of conspiracy to provide material support or resources to terrorist activities and other related charges. A third defendant was found guilty of conspiracy relating to fraud and misuse of visas, and the fourth man was acquitted of all charges. The federal prosecutor cited the case as proof that with diligence and hard work, the FBI and Justice Department have the tools, the knowledge, the expertise and the will to stop terrorists before they inflict harm on our great nation and our allies. 513 José Padilla U.S. citizen José Padilla was arrested in May 2002, just two months before Ujaama s arrest, at Chicago s O Hare Airport. After holding Padilla for a month under the same federal material witness statute, and providing him appointed criminal defense counsel, the government reversed course. On June 9, 2002, the president formally designated Padilla an enemy combatant 514 and ordered him transferred to a military brig in South Carolina. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Padilla had had contact with Al Qaeda members during his recent visit to Pakistan, and had returned to begin preparing a dirty bomb a conventional explosive containing radioactive materials. 515 For more than a year, Padilla has had no contact with the outside world, including the lawyers appointed to represent him. Padilla s appointed attorneys filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal court; the government opposed. 516 As in Hamdi s case, Justice Department lawyers argued, the designation of Padilla as an enemy combatant merits great deference by the court because the president was acting as commander-in-chief in making the determination. 517 At most, the court could conduct minimal review to confirm that the president had some evidence to support the designation. 518 The Justice Department also argued that the Authorization for Use of Military Force that Congress passed after the September 11 attacks authorized the president to make such determinations. 519 Against this, Padilla s appointed counsel together with former military lawyers, retired federal judges, and a wide political range of legal experts who filed briefs as friends of the court in the case (including the Lawyers Committee) have maintained that the government s treatment of Padilla is illegal. 520 Their arguments are several. First, all U.S. citizens are entitled to protection under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, including the right to counsel; the right to a speedy jury trial; the right to be informed of the specific charges against them; the right to confront witnesses against them; and the right to have compulsory process to call witnesses in their favor. The Constitution identifies no enemy combatant exception to these basic rules. Second, federal law 18 U.S.C. 4001(a) makes clear that [n]o citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress. 521 Finally, while the post-september 11 use of force resolution was intended to authorize action against any one who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, the government has not accused Padilla of involvement in those attacks

88 ASSESSING THE NEW NORMAL EX PARTE MILLIGAN Lamdin P. Milligan, a citizen of Indiana during the Civil War, was, like José Padilla, accused of plotting against the United States. Milligan was alleged to be a leader of a secret organization, the Sons of Liberty, that conspire[ed] against the draft, and plott[ed] insurrection, the liberation of the prisoners of war at various depots, the seizure of the state and national arsenals, armed cooperation with the enemy, and war against the national government. 523 Yet the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the government s effort to try Milligan by military tribunal: It is not easy to see how he can be treated as a prisoner of war, when he lived in Indiana for the past twenty years, was arrested there, and had not been, during the late troubles, a resident of any of the states in rebellion. If in Indiana he conspired with bad men to assist the enemy, he is punishable for it in the courts of Indiana; but, when tried for the offence, he cannot plead the rights of war; for he was not engaged in legal acts of hostility [i.e., acts permitted to combatants under the law of war] against the government, and only such persons, when captured, are prisoners of war. If he cannot enjoy the immunities attaching to the character of a prisoner of war, how can he be subject to their pains and penalties? 524 On the contrary, the Court held, military trials for violations of the law of war can never be applied to citizens in states which have upheld the authority of the government, and where the courts are open and their process unobstructed. 525 Ex Parte Milligan remains binding precedent today. The first federal court to rule on the Padilla case issued a mixed opinion. Judge Michael Mukasey accepted the executive s contention that Padilla could be designated an enemy combatant. 526 He ruled that to hold Padilla under this designation, the executive only had to provide some evidence that he was engaged in a mission against the United States on behalf of an enemy with whom the United States is at war. 527 But even this highly deferential some evidence standard required more than the conclusory assertions the government had thus far provided. A declaration submitted by a military official could not satisfy the executive s burden unless Padilla were given the right to challenge the evidence presented, and for that, Padilla must be given access to counsel. 528 Both sides have now appealed Judge Mukasey s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

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